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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/frozenzoneitsexpOOhyde 



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THE FROZEN ZONE 

AND 

ITS EXPLORERS: 

A COMPREHENSIVE RECORD OF 

Voyages, Trayels, Discoveries. AilTeiitiires aiul WMle-Fisliinc 



'5 

IN THE 

ARCTIC REGIONS 

FOE OKE THOUSAND YEARS. 

WITH A FULL AND RELIABLE HISTORY OF THE LATE EXPEDI- 
TION UNDER CHARLES FRANCIS HALL 

IN THE 

EMBRACING 
THE DISCOYEEIES AND DEATH OF ITS COMMANDER ; THE FEARFUL 

SIX months' drift on the ICE ; JOHN herron's DIARY ; 

THE WRECK OF THE STEAMER ; AND THE FINAL ESCAPE 

OF CAPTAIN BUDDINGTON AND COMPANIONS 

IN OPEN BOATS. 

ALSO, AN ACCOUNT OF THE SEARCH MADE FOR THE CASTAWAYS 

BY THE 



^ 



iLLtrSTFvATED WITH ONE HtTNDEED AND SeVENTY-FIVE ENGRAVINGS AND MaPS. 



WRITTEN, AND COMPILED FROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES, 
BY 

ALEXANDER HYDE, A. M., REY. A.C. BALDWII, AND REY. W.L. GAGE. 

To WHICH IS ADDED A SKETCH OF Dn. KaNE, BY PkOF. ChAELES W. SHIELDS, D. D., 

OP Princeton College. 



PUBLISHED BY SUBSCHIPTION ONLY.....— -' "^^^ 
HARTFORD, CONN. : 4 '\^ ;p^nMr^C^ 

COLUMBIA]^ BOOK COMP '"" 

W. E. BLISS & CO., TOLEDO, OHIO : F. DEWING & CO., SAN FRANCISCO, CAL, 

1874.. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 
THE COLUMBIAN BOOK COMPANY. 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



O 



O^A 



INTRODUCTION. 



The Arctic Kegions, cold, dreary and desolate, have 
been the theatre of the most heroic exploits and dar- 
ing adventures the world has ever seen. Here the 
genius of such men as Baffin, Barentz, Hudson, Parry, 
Ross, Franklin, Kane and Hall, has found ample scope 
for development ; and a taste of the perils and hard- 
shi]3s of the Frozen Zone only served to incite them 
to new encounters. No vision of " sunny fountains 
rolling down their golden sands," or ambition for 
conquest and usurped power filled their minds : but 
the love of adventure, the advancement of science, 
and the holier impulses of humanity, were the lode- 
stones which drew them toward the Pole. 

To chronicle faithfully and in an attractive man- 
ner the brilliant achievements of these adventurous 
spirits, and to present, incidentally, graphic pictures 
of Life and Nature in the Realms of Frost, is the 
object of this book. In it, culled from scores of vol- 
umes of Arctic Literature, are condensed the most 
interesting records of a thousand years, commencing 
with the discovery of Iceland by the Northmen in 861. 



IV INTRODUCTION. 

While no important expedition, nor even the expe- 
rience of whalers, has been overlooked, prominence 
has been given to the most interesting ones, and when 
practicable the story is told in the explorers' own 
words, as in the case of Franklin and Kane ; no one 
will regret that so mnch space has been assigned to 
their inimitable narratives. 

The history, discoveries and disasters of the Polaris 
Expedition, with the perils and escapes of the divided 
crew, are fully narrated, and in connection with the 
thrilling diaries of John Herron and Hermann Sie- 
mans, present one of the most interesting episodes of 
Arctic Adventure. 

Fi'anklin and his crew no longer need relief, and 
thanks to the Pacific Railroad a North-west Passage 
would be of no value. A voyage to the North Pole 
seems to be the only thing remaining to be done in 
the way of Arctic research, " whereby a notable mind 
can make itself famous." The discoveries of our 
countrymen have pointed out the only route thither, 
which can be taken with any prospect of success ; and 
appearances indicate that an English expedition on a 
grand scale will soon attempt to follow in the track 
of the Advance and Polaris. It is hoped that no 
reader of these fascinating pages will be stimulated 
thereby to join in the hazardous enterprise ; but that 
all ^vho contemplate the heroic daring, sublime for- 
titude, and Christian faith and resignation under most 
desperate circumstances which many Arctic exploi ers 
have displayed, will be strengthened in their purpose 
to make the voyage of life with hope and courage. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 
SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF DK. KANE , 1 

CHAPTER I. 

THE AKCTIC REGIONS. 

The Arctic Circle— The Arctic Ocean— The Arctic Niorht— The Mid- 
night San — Summer and Winter — Beautiful Provision of Nature — 
Characteristic Features — Arctic Explorers 17 

CHAPTER n. 

EARLY DISCOVEKIES AND HISTORY. 

The Scandinavian Mariners and their Voyages — Discovery of Iceland — ■ 
Eric the Red — Discovery of Greenland — Tlie Northmen in Amer- 
ica — Northern Voyag-e of Columbas— Stnry of the early Greenland 
Settlers — War and Pestilence — Searcli For the lost Colonists — Hans 
Egede — The Moravian Missions — A Vis 1 1 > Lichtenfels — The native 
Greenlanders — The Cabots and their Voyages — The Labrador Col- 
ony — French and Portuguese Explorers 23 

CHAPTER in. 

ENGLISH EXPEDITIONS TO THE NORTH-EAST. 

Expedition under Sir Hugh Willoughby — A Storm off the North Cape 
— Nova Zembla Scenery — A Winter on t!ie Lapland Coast — Fate of 
the Explorers — Chancelor's Visit to Moscow — The Searchthrift and 
her Cruise — English Adventurers in Asia — Lake Baikal — Pet and 
Jackson — Mistakes of a Geographer 40 

CHAPTER IV. 

DUTCH EXPEDITIONS TO THE NORTH-EAST. 
Wm. Barentz— The Orange Islands— Noosing a Bear— The Cape of Idols 
— Second Expediiion — A Russian Craft — Among the Samoiedes — 
Corneliz Ryp — Discovery of Bear Islands and Spitzbergen — Impris- 
oned—Building a House— Life at Icy Port— A Winter of Ilardsliips 
—Feast of the Kings— The Ship Deserted— Icy Ramparts— Death of 
Barentz 47 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

ARCTIC VOYAGES OP FROBISHER AND DAVIS. 

Early English Adventurers— Martin Frobisher — "Meta Incognita" — 
Fight with Esquimaux — Relics of lost Sailors — Female Prisoners — 
Treachery of the Natives — Frobisher's third Expedition — A Storm — 
The Expedition Astray — "All is not Gold that Glitters" — Sir Hum- 
phrey Gilbert — Loss of the " Squirrel" — John Davis — The " Land of 
Desolation" — A Greenland Dance — Voyage with the Mermaid — 
Esquimaux Incantations — Excursion to the Interior — The Sailors' 
Warning — Desertion of Ships 69 

CHAPTER VI. 

ARCTIC VOYAGES OF HENRY HUDSON AND OTHERS. 

Weymouth's Expedition — A cowardly Crew — Fate of Capt. Knight — 
An Esquimaux Attack — Hudson's Polar Voyage — A Mermaid— Voy- 
age in the Half-moon — Hudson's last Voyage — Trouble with the Sail- 
ors — Discovery — In Winter-quarters — Mutiny — The Tragedy in Hud- 
son's Bay — Adventures of the Mutineers 85 

CHAPTER VII. 

ARCTIC VOYAGES OF BAFFIN AND OTHERS. 

Button and Bylot — Capt. Gibbons' Adventure — Baffin's early Voyages — 
Memorable Discoveries — Fotherby's Voyage — Danish Expedition — 
Munk's disastrous Voyage — The Fox and James Expedition — A 
Winter of Suffering— Final Escape — A lost Expedition — Heme — 
Mackenzie — Phipps — Cook 105 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE ARCTIC WHALE-FISHERY. 

Early Fishing Expedition — The Si>itzborgen Seas — Adventures of Cap- 
tain Edge— Dutch Enterprise — A Winter in Spitzbergen — An Arctic 
Tragedy— Years of Peril — The Whales' Paradise — Ship wrecks — 
Memorials of the Hollanders 122 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE ARCTIC WHALE-FISHERY. (CONTINUED.) 

Whale Catching in Baffin's Bay — Disasters in Melville Bay — "Baffin's 
Fair" — Yankee Whalemen- The Dundee Whaling Steamers— Rescue 
of the Polaris Crew 136 

CHAPTER X. 

CRUISE OF THE ISABELLA AND ALEXANDER. 

Ross and Parry's Expedition— On the Greenland Coast— A Secluded 
Race— Esquimaux Ideas of a Ship — The Arctic Highlanders — Signal 
of Return 141 



CONTENTS. VU 

CHAPTEK XI. 

CRUISE OF THE HECLA AND GRIPER. 

Parry and Liddon Expedition — Entering Lancaster Sound — Hopes and 
Disappointments — Dreary Shores — The Reward Earned — Winter- 
quarters and Amusements — The North Georgian Theatre — Eire! 
Fire !— A Break-up — A successful Expedition 151 

CHAPTER XII. 

CRUISE OP THE FURY AND HECLA. 

Parry and Lyon's Expedition — The Savage-Islanders — Repulse Bay — 
Frozen in — Thieving Natives — " The Rivals " — "The Merry Dancers " 
— Esquimaux Neighbors Discovered — Astonishing the Natives — An 
Excursion — A Fight with Walrus — Stopped by Ice — Again Frozen in 
— A cheering Spectacle — The fair Esquimaux — An Esquimaux Magi- 
cian — Parry's third Expedition 163 

CHAPTER XIII. 

VOYAGE OF THE DOROTHEA AND TRENT. 

Buchan and Franklin's Expedition — The Rendezvous at Magdalena Bay 
— An Avalanche — On the Edge of the Ice — A Dangerous Position — 
Escape to Fair Haven 181 

CHAPTER XIV. 
franklin's first land expedition. 
Arrival at York Factory — Perils of River Navigation — A Winter's Jour- 
ney — Testing a Conjurer's Skill — Indian Customs — Interview with 
Akaitcho— The Winter at Fort Enterprise — Reception of a Chief — 
Down the Coppermine River — Bloody Falls — Encounter with Esqui- 
maux — Voyage on the Polar Sea — The Return Journey commenced — 
Crossing a River — Exciting Adventures — Building a Canoe — Separa- 
tion of the Men — Junius missing — A Deserted Fort — Starvation — 
Life at Fort Enterprise 184 

CHAPTER XV. 
franklin's first land expedition (continued.) 
Dr. Richardson's Narrative— Suspicious Conduct of Michel— The Mur- 
der of Hood— Richardson Shoots Michel— The Retreat to the Fort- 
Arrival of Indians— Relief at Hand— The Journey to Fort York 218 

CHAPTER XVI. 
franklin's second land expedition. 
The Rendezvous at Great Bear Lake— The Winter at Fort Franklin— 
At the Mouth of the Mackenzie— The Expedition in Trouble— Contest 
with the Esquimaux — A Brave Interpreter— Voyage along the Coast 
—Second Winter at Fort Franklin 231 



VUl CONTEXTS. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

ARCTIC VOYAGES OF LYONS, BEECIIY, AND OTHERS. 

Scoresby's Discoveries— E\-cursion on Jan Mayen — Among the Moun- 
tains -A Perilous Descent— Deserted Habitations— Cruise of the Griper 
— Sal)ine's Researches in High Latitudes — On tlie East Greenland 
Coast— Scientific Problems Solved — Lyon's Second Voyage — The 
Snow-bunting — Bay of God's Mercy — Beechey's Expedition — Ap- 
proach to Kamchatka — The Lawrence Islanders — Customs of the 
Alaskans — Wreck of the Barge — Skirmishes with the Natives. 238 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
parry's polar voyage. 
The Hecla and Her Outfit— In Treurenberg Bay— The Start for the Pole 
— A Journey on Ice — Drifting South — A Hopeless Undertaking — 
Hecla Cove 255 

CHAPTER XIX. 

EXPEDITION OF JOHN AND JAMES C. ROSS. 

Expedition of John and James C. Ross— The Victory — Life at Ilolstein- 
berg— Arrival at Eury Beach — Frozen In — Winter at Felix Harbor — 
King William's Land — Discovery of the Magnetic Pole — The Victory 
Deserted — Voyage in Open Boats — Rescued by the Isabella — Return 
of the Lost Explorers 2G1 

CHAPTER XX. 

GEORGE back's EXPEDITIONS. 

Overland through Canada — Woman's Rights at Norway House — The 
Batteaux and Canoes — Indian Summer Encampments — " Raising the 
Devil " — Sad Fate of Augustus — Running the Rapids — A Desolate 
Region —Voyage in the Terror — Fearful Ice-drift 278 

CHAPTER XXL 

LAND EXPEDITIONS OP DEASE, SIMPSON, AND RAE. 

A Winter's Journey — On the Coasts of Alaska — ])own Escape Rapids — 
Winter-Quarters on Great Bear Lake — Return to Red River Settle- 
ment-Simpson Murdered— Dr. Rae's Explorations 288 

CHAPTER XXIL 

franklin's LAST VOYAGE, WITH A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 

Birth and Education — Early Passion for the Sea — A Midshipman at 
Trafalgar— At Battle of New Orleans— Arctic Voyages— Governor of 
Van Dieman's Land — The Erebus and Terror — A Lost Expedition. . . 296 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

SEARCHES FOR FRANKLIN. 

Expeditions of 1818 — Voyage of Ross to Lancaster Sound — Overland 
Search by Richardson and Rae — The Herald and Plover 304 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

SEARCHES FOR FRANKLIN. (CONTINUED.) 

Austin's Squadron— Discoveries at Beechey Island — Sledge Expedition 
—Carrier Pigeons — Cruise of the Prince Albert — The LadjFranJiiiu. . 310 

CHAPTER XXV. 

SEARCHES FOR FRANKLIN. (CONTINUED.) 

Coliinson and McClure's Expedition — Cruise of the Investigator — On the 
Coast of the Continent — Up Prince of Wales Strait — Erozen in— Dis- 
covery of a North-west Passage — A Night Adventure — Life at Mercy 
Bay — McCIintock's Cairn— Third Winter in the Ice — Relief at Hand 
— Visit of Lieut. Pim — The Ship Deserted — Retreat to the Resolute — 
Cruise of the Enterprise — Recent Death of McClure 317 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

SEARCHES FOR FRANKLIN. (CONTINUED.) 

Second Cruise of the Prince Albert — Party Separated from the Ship — 
A Night at Cape Seppings — Beliefs Rescue Party — Winter at Batty 
Bay — A Visit to Fury Beach — Somerset House 332 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

SEARCHES FOR FRANKLIN. (CONTINUED.) 

Expeditions of 1852— Belcher's Squadron— News of McClure— Pirn's 
Journey to Mercy Bay— Kellett's Adventures— Abandonment of the 
Ships — Return to England 339 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

SEARCHES FOR FRANKLIN. (CONTINUED.) 

Inglefield's Voyages— Cruise of the Phoenix and Lady Franklin— Death 
of Bello-t— Lieut. Cresswell— Dr. Rae at Repulse Bay 345 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE FIRST AMERICAN EXPEDITION. 

The Advance and Rescue— Off Newfoundland— The Arctic Day— Crown' 
Prince Islands— Kayaks 349 

CHAPTER XXX. 

THE FIRST AMERICAN EXPEDITION. (CONTINUED.) 

Iceberg Scenery— Wonders of Refraction— Arctic Navigation— Bergs— 
A Race— A Pinch— Animal Life— Frozen Families 372 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE FIRST AMERICAN EXPEDITION. (CONTINUED.) 

The Crimson Cliffs— An Arctic Garden— Trapping the Auks— Grood-bye- 
to Baffin— Franklin's Encampment Discovered— The Graves 399 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE FIRST AMERICAN EXPEDITION. (CONTINUED.) 

Visit to the Resolute — The Rendezvous — ^A Gale— Order for Return — 
Frozen in — Drifting — Fighting the Enemy — The Aurora — Crisis — A 
Race of Pale Faces — Midnight of the Year — Returning Light 428 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE FIRST AMERICAN EXPEDITION. (CONTINUED.) 

A Gale — An Escape — Floating Bears— Esquimaux Guests — A Night 
Scene — In an Ice Trap — The Escape — The Governor's Mansion — The 
Feast — Feats of the Kayaker — Conclusion 478 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

DR. KANE's second EXPEDITION. 

Rensselaer Harhor — Camp on the Floes — Sudden Alarm — The Rescue 
Party — The Wanderers Found — A Bivouac — Esquimaux Visitors — 
Death of Baker — Adventures of Morton and Hans — Signal Cairn — 
The Record— The Arrest— The Punishment— Our Wild Allies- 
Hunting Excursion — Esquimaux Homestead — A Bear Fight 519 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

DR. KANE'S second EXPEDITION. (CONTINUED.) 

The Cahin by Night — ^The Hut in a Storm— ^Hans Discouraged — Day 
Dreams — Joyful News — A Sun Worshiper — Famine at Etah — A 
Walrus Hunt — The Delectable Mountains — A Deserter — A Morning 
in the Cabin — Shunghu's Daughter — A Noble Savage — Enterprising 
Hunters 572 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

DR. KANE's SECOND EXPEDITION. (CONTINUED.) 

Farewell to the Brig — Approach to Etah — A Midnight Festival — A 
Crystal Palace — At the Open Water — Good-bye to Esquimaux — 
Embarkation — Weary Man's Rest — The Esquimaux Eden — Lost 

; Among Bergs—*' The Seal ! "—Terra Firma I— The Welcome 604 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

THE IIART8TENE RELIEF EXPEDITION. 

Narrative of John K. Kane. 635 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

franklin's fate DISCOVERED. 

Dr. Rae's Discoveries — The Fox Expedition — Franklin's Monument — 
Winter in Bellot Strait — McClintock's Discoveries— The Cairn at 
Point Victory— Crozicr's Record— A Buried Boat— Return of the Fox 
—Relics of Franklin— The Story of the Lost p:xpedition 641 



CONTENTS. XI 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

ARCTIC SIBERIA AND ITS EXPLORERS. 

Siberian Exiles — Voyage of Deshnef—Bering's Discoveries — Clielyus- 
kin's Explorations — The New Siberia Islands — Anjou's Travels — 
"Wrangell's Explorations — Skill of Siberian Sledge-drivers — The 
" Great Russian Polynia " — The Lower Yenisei 663 

CHAPTER XL. 

TRAVELS IN ALASKA. 

The Aleutian Islands — Expeditions of Dall and Whymper — Up the 
Yukon— A Winter at Nulato— The Alaskans— Sitka 676 

CHAPTER XLI. 

DR. HAYES' EXPEDITION. 

The Voyage to Smith Sound — Winter at Port Foulke — Sledge Journey 
— Grinnell Land — Cape Lieber — Return , 682 

CHAPTER XLII. 

SKETCH OF CHARLES F. HALL, AND HIS EARLIER ARCTIC TRAVELS. 

Early Life — Proposes to Search for Franklin — Secures Passage in a 
Whaler — Captain Buddington — The "George Henry" — Frozen in at 
Field's Bay — Visit from Ebierbing and Tookoolito — Excursions — Fro- 
bisher Relics — "Fisherman's Luck" — Second Winter in the Ice — 
Return Home — Second Journey to the North — The Monticello — Resi- 
dence on the Northern Coasts of Hudson's Bay — A visit to King Wil- 
liam's Land — Relics of Franklin's Expedition 686 

CHAPTER XLIII. 

THE POLARIS EXPEDITION. 

Captain Hall's Plans — The Polaris and her Crew — Sketch of Officers — 
On the Greenland Coast — Disco — The Expedition at Upernavik — 
At Tessuisak — Hall's Good-bye to Civilization 696 

CHAPTER XLIV. 

THE POLARIS EXPEDITION. (CONTINUED.) 

Adrift on the Floes — Off the Labrador Coast — A Fearful Position — Sig- 
naling the Tigress — Rescued — Startling News from the Polaris — The 
Castaways at St. John's — Suspicions — The "Frolic" — At Washington . 706 

CHAPTER XLV. 

THE POLARIS EXPEDITION. (CONTINUED.) 

The Polaris in High Latitude — Thank God Harbor — Hall's Journey to 
the North — Hall's Last Dispatch — Death of Hall — Joe's Story — 
Funeral of Captain Hall — The Winter at Polaris Bay — Outside of the 
Ship — Returning Day— Bear Hunting— Excursions to the North — 
Separation from the Polaris — The Drift Southward — The Rescue — 
Joe and Hans 711 



Xll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XLVI. 

THE POLARIS KXPEDITIOX. (CONTINUED.) 

Journal of Herman Siemans, a Seaman of the Polaris, Extending from 
June 29th, 1871, to October 12th, 1872 731 

CHAPTER XLVII. 

THE POLARIS EXPEDITION. (CONTINUED.) 

Diary of John Herron, Steward of the Polaris, Kept while Drifting on 

the Ice from October 15th, 1872, to April SOth, 1873 750 

CHAPTER XLVIII. 

POT.ARIS SEARCH AND RELIEF EXPEDITIONS. 

Cruise of the Juniata and Tigress— The Little Juniata — The Tigress on 
the Trail — Buddington's Camp Discovered— Interview with Esqui- 
maux — Signaling the Juniata at Night 7G9 

CHAPTER XLIX. 

THE POLARIS, EXPEDITION. (CONCLUDED.) 

Captain Buddington's Narrative — The Polaris Wrecked and Deserted — 
Preparing for Winter — Visit from the Natives —The Winter at Life- 
Boat Cove — The Start Homeward— The Journey Southward— Res- 
cued by the Ravenscraig — A Dundee Whaler 776 

CHAPTER L. 

GERMAN ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. 

Destruction of the"Hansa" — Cruise of tlie "Germania" — Important 
Discoveries— Payer's Expedition— The " Tcgethoff " and "Isbjorn". . 787 

CHAPTER LI. 

SWEDISH AND NORWEGIAN EXPEDITIONS. 

Captain Carlsen's Voyage— Ice Haven Revisited— Relics of the Dutch 
Expedition — Nordcnskiold's Expediton — The Winter at Mussel Bay — 
Startling News — The Ice-Bound Fishermen and Their Fate — Cruise 
of the "Albert" and "Groenhind" — Disaster on tlie Nova Zembla 
Coast — Tlie "Diana" and "Samson" — Proposed ICnglish Expcdi- 
ti-.n toward the North Pole — Tribute to Captain Hall 793 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Page. 

1 The Polakis in High Latitudes, (Frontispiece.) 

2 POKTRAIT OF Dr. KaNE, 1 

,'3 House in Havana where Dr. Kane Hied, 10 

4 The Rescue, 18 

5 Portrait of Sir John Franklin, 19 

C Scene on the Greenland Coast, 25 

7 View of Fiskernaes, Greenland, 33 

8 Moravian Settlement at Lichtenpels, 33 

9 Ships Among Bergs, 39 

10 Winter in Moscow, 44 

11 Ships Entangled in Ice, 46 

12 Lake Baikal, Eastern Siberia, 47 

13 Votive Cross and Midnight Sun— Northern Eussia, 58 

14 The Land of Desolation, 73 

15 Freighted Iceberg, 73 

16 The Middle Pack, 81 

17 A Sketch, 84 

18 Esquimaux Dog-Teams, 93 

19 Esquimaux Snow-Houses, 93 

20 Arctic Aurora, 109, 

21 View on the Spitzbergen Coast, 109 

22 Approaching Winter— James' Bat, 115 

23 Arctic Parhelia, 115 

21 The Icx-Bound Harbor, 116 

25 The Kayaker in a Gale, .• 121 

26 A Whaling Scene, 141 

27 Kayak and Oomiak, 143 

28 Whalers Stopped by the Pack, 143 

29 An Ice Cathedral, 144 

30 Cape Isabella, 147 

31 Cape Alexander, 147 

32 Track of the Hecla and Griper, 157 

33 Parry's Ships in Winter Quarters, 157 

84 Stranded, 162 

35 The "Merry Dancers," 167 

36 Watching for Indian PIorse-Thieves, IBS 

37 Hunting on Snow-Shoes, 191 

38 Disguised Buffalo Hunters, 191 

39 Hunters' Winter Camp, 200 

40 A Hungry Explorer, , 217 

41 Overland Explorers, 230 

42 A Station of the Hudson's Bay Company, 231 

43 The Mariner's Compass, , 237 

44 Petropaulski, Kamchatka, .250 

45 Honey-Combfd Iceberg, , , . 254 



XIV ILLUSTRATIONS. 

46 Jack AND His "Deer," 260 

47 An Ice Bridge, 277 

48 Indian Summer Encampment, 280 

49 Moose Hunting in Canoes, 280 

50 A Lead Through the Floe 287 

51 Winter Couriers op the Fur Company, 288 

52 Eroded Berg, 309 

53 Hummocks, 316 

54 Beechet Island, 340 

55 The Ice-Barrier, 340 

56 The Advance and Rescue at Navt Yard, 353 

57 Our First Iceberg, 353 

58 The Sukkertoppen, 359 

59 Entering Disco, 359 

60 Disco Huts, 360 

61 Inspectors' House, Lievelt, 369 

62 Among the Bergs, 369 

63 Group OF Seals, 370 

64 Iceberg, 371 

65 Glaciers of Jacob's Bight 373 

66 In a Fog 373 

67 Tracking, 381 

68 Kayacks, 381 

69 Woman's Boat, 382 

70 The Devil's Thumb, 394 

71 Melvulle Bay, 394 

72 Esquimaux on Snow-Shoes, 398 

73 Looking for Water, 403 

74 Bessie's Cove, 403 

75 The Advance in February, 465 

76 Winter in the Pack, 465 

77 Bird's-Eye View of Ice-Floe, 484 

78 Esquimaux Beauties, 489 

79 The Governor's Sons, 493 

80 Saluting the Provenese, 495 

81 Good-Bye to the Prince Albert, 499 

82 Interior of a Native Hut, L'PERNAvni, 499 

83 The Governor's Mansion, 506 

84 Harpooning Seals, 517 

85 Fastened to an Iceberg, 521 

86 Parting Hawsers, 521 

87 Sylvia Headland— Inspecting a Harbor, 527 

88 The Advance Frozen in at Rensselaer Harbor, 527 

89 In the Tent, 533 

90 Pinnacly Berg 533 

91 The Rescue Party, 534 

92 Loading the Faith, 543 

93 First Meeting with Esquimaux, 543 

94 Tent on the Floes, 549 

95 The Bear in Camp, 549 

90 Gathering Moss, 649 

97 Morton and Hans Entering Kennedy Channel, 653 

98 Morton and Hans Leaving the Channel, 553 

90 Kennedy Channel, 561 

100 View from Cape Constitution, 561 

101 An Esquimaux Homestead, 567 

102 Wild Dog Team, 567 

103 Arctic Moonlight, 573 



ILLUSTRATIONS. XV 

104 The Ice-Foot Canopy, 573 

105 The Brig in her Winter Cradle, 5T9 

106 Approaching the Deserted Hut, 579 

107 The Open Water, 579 

108 Arctic Sea-Gulls, 585 

109 Eider Island Ducks, 585 

110 The Walrus Hunter, 591 

111 The Atluk, or Seal-Hole, 599 

112 Shooting Seal, 599 

113 Walrus Sporting, 599 

114 Esquimaux Portraits— Paulik—Anak—Accomodah, 605 

115 Greenland Children Playing Ball, 609 

116 Catching Auks, 609 

117 Boat-Camp in a Storm, 617 

118 Good-bye to the Esquimaux, 617 

119 Birds op Providence Cliffs, 627 

120 Passing the Crimson Cliffs, 627 

121 Cape Welcome, 633 

122 Our First Kayak, 633 

123 The Faith, 634 

124 A Small Water Party, 639 

125 Discovery of Franklin's Cairn, 648 

126 Kelics op the Lost Explorers, 648 

127 The Erebus and Terror in the Ice-Stream, 657 

128 Funeral op Sir John Franklin, 657 

129 A Polar Bear Picnic, 662 

130 Exiles En route for Siberia, 663 

131 A Siberian Fort, 675 

132 Traveling in Kamchatka, 6T6 

133 Aleutians Catching Whales, 676 

134 Fort Nulato, Alaska— Auroral Light, 679 

135 A Deer Corral, 681 

136 View op Sitka, Alaska, 682 

137 Portrait op Captain Charles F. Hall, 693 

138 Portrait op Captain S. O. Buddington, 698 

139 Portrait- op Captain George E. Tyson, 698 

140 Signaling the Tigress, 706 

141 Funeral op Captain Hall, at Polaris Bay, 718 

142 A Bear Hunt, 730 

143 Meeting op the Floes, 749 

144 Formation op Hummocks, 768 

145 Life on the Drifting Ice-Field 769 

146 Portraits of Joe, Hannah, and Sylvia, 772 

147 The Hansa Crushed— Escape op the Crew, 787 

148 Count Wilczec in Nova Zembla, 791 

149 Relics op the Dutch Expedition, ■ 793 

150 Barentz's House at Ice Haven, 793 

And Twenty Smaller Engravings. 

MAPS, Etc. 

CiRcuMPOLAR Map, ; 1 

Map op the American Arctic Sea, , 23 

Ancient Map op Spitzbergen, 126 

Chart op the Whale-Fish Islands, 366 

Chart Showing the Discoveries op Kane, Hayes, and Hall, 640 

Fac similes, , 649-650 



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A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 

ELISHA KENT KANE, M.D., U. S. N., 

BS- 

PROF. CHARLES W. SHIELDS, D. D., OF PRINCETON COLLEGE, K J. 

The Life of Dr. Kane is already a fireside tale. Every one is 
familiar with it as the story of a young knight-errant of philanthropy 
and science, who traversed nearly the whole surface of the globe, within 
the short period of fourteen years ; who gathered here and there a 
laurel from every walk of physical research in which he strayed ; who 
plunged into the tliick of perilous adventure, abstracting in the spirit 
of philosophy, yet seeing with the eye of poesy, and loving with the 
heart of humanity; who penetrated, under such impulses, even to the 
N'orthern pole of the planet and remained secluded amidst the horrors 
of two Arctic winters ; who returned like one come back from another 
world, to invest the very story of his escape with the charms of litera- 
ture and art, and transport us, by his graphic pen, into scenes we 
scarcely realize as belonging to the earth we inhabit ; and who died at 
length, in the flush of his manhood and the morning of his fame, 
lamented by his country and the world. 

To write the story of such a life as it should be written, would be 
impossible within the limits assigned to this memoir, and nothing more, 
therefore, will be here attempted than such a sketch as may serve to 
introduce this new edition of his works to the reader. As we trace the 
usual biographical themes, though in the briefest manner, it will be 
found that his origin and education, the leading events in his career, 
the prominent traits of his character, his public services, and his piivate 
life and last moments, together yield an impression which is suited at 
once to justify his fame and perpetuate the lessons he has left to the 
world. 1 



2 LIFE OF DR. KANE. 

Elisha Kent Kane, the leader in the American search for Sir John 
Franklin, was born in Philadelphia, Feb. 3, A. D. 1820. He received 
the name of his grandfather, who had himself been named after his ma- 
ternal grandfather, the Reverend Elisha Kent, of "Kent's Parish," N. Y.^ 
and he was baptized by his uncle, the Reverend Jacob J. Janeway, 
D. D., then pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, which his 
parents attended. 

On the father's side he was descended from Colonel John Kane, of 
the British Army, his great-grandfather, who came from Ireland to the 
colony of New York about the year 1756, retired to Dutchess County, 
and there married Miss Sybil Kent, daughter of the clergyman above 
named, and aunt of Chancellor Kent. His grandfather, Elisha K. Kane, 
was a successful merchant in Albany and New York, who married Miss 
Alida Van Rensselaer, daughter of General Robert Van Rensselaer, of 
Claverack, and subsequently removed to Philadelphia. His fjithcr, the 
late Hon. John K. Kane, a graduate of Yale College, and successively 
a member of the Philadelphia bar, Attorney-General of the State, and 
Judge of the United States Court for the Eastern District of Pennsyl- 
vania, was well known as an acute and learned jurist within his profes- 
sion, as an influential statesman of the old school of politics, an active 
promoter of the arts, sciences, and charities in Philadelphia, an accom- 
plished scholar in classical and English literature, and a courtly gentle- 
man in society. And the culture, efficiency, and tact which distin- 
guished him in every relation of life were not wanting in his honored 
son. 

On the mother's side he was descended from Thomas Leiper, a 
youn!2;cr son of a Scotch family of French origin, who came in search 
of fortune about the year 1764, to the colony of Virginia, and thence 
to Pennsylvania; built extensive mills near Philadelphia; aided in 
forming the First City Troop, and served with distinguished gallantry 
in the battles of Trenton and Princeton ; united, after the war, with 
his warm personal friend. President Jefferson, in organizing the polit- 
ical party which looked to him for its leader ; and as a zealous advo- 
cate of public improvements, laid down the first experimental railway 
constructed in the United States. He married Miss Elizabeth Coltas 
Gray, the daughter of the Hon. George Gray, of Gray's Ferry, and of 
Martha Ibbetson Gray, whose generous services in nursing the sick and 
wounded prisoners during the occupation of Philadelphia by Lord 
Howe, attracted public testimonials from both parties. Their daughter, 
Jane Duval Leiper, as Mrs. Kane, illustrated the traits proverbial in 
the mothers of great men by combining with the virtues of the Spartan 



LIFE OF DR. KANE. 3 

matron, tliat energy, nerve, elasticity, and warm-heartedness which 
became famous in her son. 

On both sides, Ijis ancestry in this country, it will be seen, dates 
before the American Revohition, being derived in the paternal line from 
Ireland, Holland., and England, and in the maternal line from Scotland, 
England, and France, while the corresponding religions blended in it 
were the Episcopalian, Dutch Reformed, and Congregational, with the 
Presbyterian, Quaker, Methodist, and Moravian. And the names which 
it embraces are here mentioned, not merely because he has himself 
written them, with a just pride, upon the map of the Arctic seas, but 
also as serving to explain that rare combination of varied and even 
opposite elements of race, of creed, and of culture, which entered into 
the formation of his character. 

When Mr. Kane and Miss Leiper first met, they were in the prime 
of youthful strength and beauty ; and after a courtship, the romance 
of which has become a family tradition, they were married, April 20, 
1819. Elisha was the eldest of their children. Three other sons and 
a married daughter are still living. 

In Dr. Kane, as in most men who achieve greatness, the boy fore- 
shadowed the man. Arctic explorations were prefigured by juvenile 
feats of daring and contrivance. His biographer relates that when but 
a child, he scaled the roof by moonlight with his younger brother, 
while the family were asleep, feeling repaid for the perilous adventure 
by the "grand view" from the chimney-top. Traits which afterwards 
shone out before the world, already appeared in the school-room and 
on the playground, where he became a spirited little champion of the 
weal^ and oppressed, repelling imposition from any quarter with uncal- 
culating courage, and yet as quick to forgive as to resent an injury. 
His tastes, too, began to show the bias of coming years. He had his 
own small cabinet of minerals, birds, and insects, and his chemical lab- 
oratory, the latter to the frequent alarm of the household — and his 
favorite books were Robinson Crusoe and Pilgrim's Progress. 

But if it is easy now to trace the beginnings of his career, it was not 
so easy then to forecast it. Fonder of sports than of books, full of 
generous but ill-regulated impulses, and impatient of control, his 
course as yet was like that of a mountain torrent which has not found 
and made its channel ; and it was only when he began by his own 
efforts to retrieve his neglected education, that parental anxiety was 
relieved. 

His father would have had him follow in his own footsteps at Yale ; 
but his inclination was more towards science than learning, and the 



4 LIFEOFDK.KANE. 

optional course of study which the University of Virginia allowed, was 
found better adapted to his somewhat exceptional genius. He was in 
his seventeenth year when he entered the university, and during the 
year and a half that he studied there, made good progress in the clas- 
sical and mathematical course prescribed, as well as in his own chosen 
sciences of chemistry, miueralogy, geology, and civil engineering. It 
was at this time he said to his cousin that he "intended to make his 
marli: in the world." And the resokition seems to have derived im- 
pulse from an event which abruptly ended his collegiate course a little 
before the time of graduation. Prostrated by an acute rheumatism of 
the heart, he was wrapped in a blanket and taken by slow joni-neys 
home to Philadelphia, where he endured frightful paroxysms of pain, 
and for days appeared to be on the brink of death. He recovered, to 
learn from his physicians that he might fall as suddenly as by a musket 
shot. The decision with which he went back to the duties of life was 
only anticipated by his father's counsel : "Elisha, if you must die, die 
in harness." 

Tni-ning from the profession of a civil engineer to that of a physician, 
in his nineteenth year, he was matriculated in tlie Medical Department 
of the University of Pennsylvania, and after attending one course of 
lectures, while yet an undergraduate, he was elected one of the Resi- 
dent Physicians in the Hospital at Blockley. His preceptors and asso- 
ciates have all publicly spoken of the remarkable zeal and success with 
which he prosecuted his studies and performed his duties in these posi- 
tions. Indeed his graduating thesis on the subject of "Kyestein" was 
so highly esteemed that it was published by a vote of the Faculty, and 
attracted the general notice of the profession. It is still quoted as an 
authority both in this country and abroad. 

It had become plain that Dr. Kane's cardiac disorder combined with 
his scientific tastes and aspirations to unfit him for the routine life of a 
practitioner, and that travel, adventure, and incessant activity were with 
him a physical need as well as a moral impulse. He had no taste for 
the social blandishments under which young men born to ease and ele- 
gance too often waste tlieir prime, and the stagnant political condition 
of the country at that time afforded none of the generous careers wliich 
have since been opened to them. Neither could he accept for liimself 
the fate of a mere invalid tourist or reckless adventurer, intent on 
crowding into a short lifetime the utmost amount of mere aimless 
diversion. There nuist, if possible, be a color of scientific enthusiasm 
to sanction his life of physical hardihood. 

His father, acting upon this enlightened view of his case, applied for 



LIFE OF DR. KANE. 5 

him to the Secretary of tlie Navy for the post of surgeon in the ser- 
vice ; and after passing the required examination so creditably that the 
disqualifying state of his health was overlooked by the Board of 
Examiners, he was appointed physician of the Chinese Embassy, 
which sailed in the frigate Brandy wine, Commodore Parker, in May, 
1843. 

During the two years that he was absent npon this his first extended 
tour of travel, he made a complete circuit of the globe, sailing around 
the coast of South America, across the Pacific Ocean to Southern and 
Eastern Asia, and returning by the overland route through Europe, 
across the Atlantic to the United States. And that spirit of dauntless 
research which actuated him through life seems everywhere to have 
brought with it its own proper atmosphere of marvelous incident and 
peril. 

While the vessel remained at Rio de Janeiro, after participating with 
the diplomatic corps in the coronation of the Emperor of Brazil, he 
visited the Eastern Andes for a geological survey of that region. At 
Bombay, where the legation awaited some months the arrival of its 
chief, Mr. Cushing, by the overland route, he seized the opportunity for 
similar inland journeys, exploring the caverned temples of Elephanta, 
traveling by palanquin to the less known ruins at Karli, passing over 
to Ceylon, and engaging, with some officers of the garrison, in the ele- 
phant hunt, and the other wild sports of the island. But it was at 
Luzon or Luconia, a Spanish possession in the China Sea, that this 
adventurous spirit, though under a scientific impulse, passed the limits 
of prudence in his far-famed exploration of the crater of Tael, a vol- 
cano on the Pacific coast of the island, in a region inhabited only by 
savages. Crossing over to the capital city of the island, during one of 
the long delays of Chinese dii)lomacy, he procured an escort of natives 
from the Archbishop of Manilla, (by means of letters from American 
prelates which he had secured before leaving home,) and in company 
with his friend Baron Loe, a relative of Metternich, penetrated across 
the country to the asphaltic lake in which the island volcano is situ- 
ated. Both gentlemen at first descended together, until they reached 
a precipice overhanging the cavernous gulf of the crater, when the 
baron saw further progress to be impossible, but the doctor, in spite 
of the remonstrances of the whole party, insisted upon being lowered 
over the ledge by means of a rope made of bamboos, and held in the 
hands of the natives under the baron's direction, until he reached the 
bottom, two hundred feet below. Loosing himself from the cord, he 
forced his way downwards through the sulphurous vapors, over the hot 



6 LIFE OF DR. KANE. 

aslies, to the green, boiling lake, clipped his specimen-bottle into its 
waters, returned to the rope, several times stumbling, almost stifled, 
and with his boots charred, one of them to a coal, but succeeded in 
again fastening himself, and was hauled up by his assistants and re- 
ceived into their hands exhausted and almost insensible. Remedies 
brought from the neighboring hermitage were applied, and he was so 
far restored that they could proceed on their journey. But rumors 
spread before them among the pigmy savages on the island, of the pro- 
fane invasion which had been made into the sacred mysteries of the 
Tael, and an angry mob gathered around them, which was only dis- 
pensed by one or two pistol shots and the timely arrival of the padres. 
The trophies of this expedition were some valuable mineral specimens, 
a bottle of sulphur water, a series of graphic views from recollection 
in his sketch-book, and a written description of the volcano by one of 
the friars, which, after many wanderings, was put in his hands as he sat 
at the home dinner-table, twelve years afterwards. 

Resigning his post in the diplomatic mission. Dr. Kane practiced his 
profession in Whampoa, until he was sufficiently in funds to pursue his 
journey homeward through Calcutta by tlie overland ronte. After 
exploring the interior of India, including the Himalaya mountains, he 
was admitted with his friend, Mr. Dent, a British official, into the suite 
of Prince Tagore, one of the native Hindoo nobles, then on his way to 
the court of Queen Victoria, and traveled under this safe conduct 
through Persia and Syria, as far as Upper Egypt. At Alexandria he 
received, through an introduction by Prince Tagore to the Pasha Me- 
hemet Ali, a special firman by wdiich he was enabled safely to traverse 
the region of Egyptian ruins. But the journals of a large part of this 
expedition, as of the whole previous tour, were unfortunately lost by 
the upsetting of his boat in the Nile. In the ruined temple of Karnak 
he met with Professor Lepsius, the renowned Egyptologist, with whom 
he traveled some time, and at Luxor he proved that archaeological re- 
search is sometimes more curious than effective, by climbing, as had 
never been done before, between the colossal knees of the statue of 
Menmon, in hopes of finding some hieroglyph on the underside of the 
tablet in the lap of the figure. 

His sensitive organization, throughout life, seems to have reflected 
with peculiar intensity the disease of every country through which he 
traveled. As at Macao he had been prostrated by the rice-fever, so at 
Alexandria he was seized with an attack of the plague. When suflS- 
ciently recovered to pursue his journeyings, he set out for Greece, and 
made the tour of that classic land on foot. Athens, Plataja, Mount 



LIFE OF DR. KANE. 7 

Helicon, Thermopylae, Parnassus, were successively visited, after which 
he passed to Trieste, and thence through Germany to Switzerland, 
where the glaciers of the Alps yielded him the ice-theories which he 
afterwards tested in the Arctic regions. 

His design liad been to return to Manilla, in the island of Luzon, 
with a license from the Spanish authorities to practice his profession ; 
but failing in this, or relinquishing it, he at length yielded to urgent 
solicitations from home, and returned by way of Italy, France, and 
England, to the United States. 

Dr. Kane was at this time twenty-four years of age, and had already 
developed the traits for which he was subsequently distinguished. The 
Keverend George Jones, chaplain to the Chinese Embassy, speaks of 
him as " then very youthful-looking, with a smooth face, a florid com- 
plexion, very delicate form, smaller than the common size ; but with an 
elastic step, a bright eye, and great enthusiasm in manner, which also 
mixed itself with his conversation. He seemed to be all hope, all 
ardor, and his eye appeared already to take in the whole world as his 
own." And another of his associates in the diplomatic mission, 
Fletcher Webster, Esq., has said that " in social intercourse, although 
agreeable and very bright when called out, he still seemed to be think- 
ing of something above and beyond what was present. To his great 
scientific taste and knowledge, and his energy and resolution, he added 
a courage of the most dauntless kind. The idea of personal appre- 
hension seemed never to cross his mind. He was ambitious, not of 
mere personal distinction, but of achievements useful to mankind and 
promotive of science." 

On his return to Philadelphia, he successfully devoted himself for a 
time to his profession, both as a teacher and practitioner of medicine, 
though being still a titular surgeon of the Navy, he had put his name 
on the roll as " waiting for orders." Accordingly, three weeks before 
the declaration of war against Mexico, in May, 1846, he was ordered to 
the coast of Africa, in the frigate United States, under Commodore 
Reed. When at Rio Janeiro in 184:3, he had received, in return for 
professional services, from the famous Portuguese merchant. Da Sousa, 
introductory letters to his commercial representatives on the African 
coast, by means of which he now visited and examined the slave-fac- 
tories; and while the frigate was in harbor, he also joined a caravan 
going to the interior, and was presented at the court of his savage 
majesty the king of Dahomey, where he became convinced that even 
the horrors of the middle passage were merciful compared with those 
from which its victims had been rescued. 



8 LIFE OF DR. KAXE. 

From tliis comparatively inglorious field of the public service, Dr. 
Kane was transferred by a virulent attack of the coast-fever, which, 
after bringing him to the point of death, required his immediate return 
home. He reached Philadelphia utterly broken in health, but eager to 
mingle in the stirring scenes then passing in Mexico, from which he 
had been withheld during his ten months' absence. When scarcely 
yet convalescent, he hastened to Washington, obtained credentials as 
bearer of dispatches to General Scott, then in the Mexican capital, and 
after stopping in Kentucky to procure a horse, said by one of his col- 
leagues to have been " the finest animal ever seen in Mexico," pursued 
his journey to New Orleans, and thence across the Gulf to Vera Cruz. 
It was while on his way to the interior that an aftair occurred, the well- 
attested facts of which bring back the romance of chivalry as a reality. 

Dr. Kane, having been unable to procure an American escort, had 
intrusted himself to a Mexican spy-company, underColonelDomingucs, 
and was approaching Nopaluca, when they encountered a body of 
contra-guerrillas, escorting Generals Gaona and Torrejon, with other 
Mexican officers. A short and severe contest ensued, resulting in the 
capture of most of the Mexican party. During the fray, the doctors 
charger carried him between young Colonel Gaona and his orderly, 
who both fell upon him at the same moment. Receiving only a slight 
flesh hurt from the lance of the latter, he parried the sabre-cut of the 
former and unhorsed him with a wound in the chest. Soon afterwards 
cries came from young Gaona to save his father, the aged general, 
whom, together with the other Mexican prisoners, the renegade Do- 
mingues and his bandits were about to butcher in cold blood. Dr. 
Kane instantly charged among them with his six-shooter, and suc- 
ceeded at length in enforcing humanity to the vanquished, though only 
after himself receiving a lance-thrust in the abdomen and a blow which 
cost him the loss of his horse. But still another act of mercy remained 
to be performed. As the old General sat beside his son, who was 
bleeding to death from his wound, the doctor, with no better surgical 
implements than a table-fork and a piece of pack-thread, succeeded in 
taking up and tying the artery, and thus saving the life which he had 
endangered. 

The gratitude of the rescued Mexicans knew no bounds, and when it 
was found that their deliverer was himself suffering from his wounds, 
he was taken by General Gaona to his own residence, and there nursed 
for weeks by the ladies of the family, with every attention that wealth 
and refinement could suggest. A tissue of circumstantial as well as 
personal evidence has saved the chronicler of this incident the risk of 



LIFE OF DK. KANE. 9 

seeming a roiiiaTicer. The published letters which passed between the 
American and Mexican governors of Puebla in regard to Dr. Kane, 
interchanged his praises ; and on his return to Philadelphia, more than 
seventy of the most distinguished gentlemen of the city united in pre- 
senting him with a sword, as a memorial of " an incidental exploit 
which was crowned with the distinction due to gallantry, skill, and 
success, and was hallowed in the flush of victory by the noblest hu- 
manity to the vanquished." 

After the Mexican war, in January, 1849, Dr. Kane was attached to 
the storeship Supply, Commander Arthur Sinclair, bound for Lisbon, 
the Mediterranean, and Rio Janeiro. The diseases which he had suc- 
cessively contracted in China, Egypt, Africa, and Mexico, had made sad 
inroads upon his health, and the voyage, thougk without much of in- 
cident, at least served to recruit his streno-th. He was next assimied to 
the Coast Survey, and had settled into its round of duty, when he was 
suddenly called to the great work of his life. 

" On the 12th of May," he writes, " while bathing in the tepid waters 
of the Gulf of Mexico, I received one of those courteous little epistles 
from Washington which the electric telegraph has made so familiar to 
naval ofiicers. It detached me from the coast-survey, and ordered me 
to proceed forthwith to New York for duty upon the Arctic expedition." 
For months before, the civilized world had resounded with the cry to 
the rescue of Sir John Franklin, and the Government, moving in sym- 
pathy with the whole country, had resolved upon sending in search of 
the lost navigator the two vessels, the "Advance" and "Rescue," under 
Commander De Haven. Dr. Kane, who had repeatedly volunteered 
his services, was made senior medical officer and naturalist of the ex- 
pedition, and on his return, published its history in the form of a "Per- 
sonal Narrative," collected from his private journals. The cruise lasted 
during sixteen months, but resulted in little more than the discovery 
of Sir John Franklin's first winter quarters and the graves of three of 
his men. 

In proceeding to organize the second United States Grinnell Expe- 
dition under his own command. Dr. Kane had before him an object 
worthy of his matured powers and noblest aims, and gave himself to 
the task with the zeal of a votary. But what discouragements, what 
disappointments, and what difficulties entered into that great under- 
taking from its outset to its close, can be but partially seen through 
the veil of delicate reserve which he has "thrown over them. Some- 
thing, however, may be learned in regard to them from another source, 
and upon authority as competent, as it is disinterested and honorable. 



10 LIFEOFDR.KANE. 

Captain Sherard Osborne, of Iler Majesty's Navy, in a paper advoca- 
ting further polar exploration, holds the following language : — 

" It is only fair to Dr. Kaue to say, that never in our times has a 
navigator entered the ice so indifferently prepared for a Polar winter. 
With only seventeen followers, two of them mutineers, without a steam- 
power for his solitary vessel, without proper sledge-equipment, without 
any preserved fresh meat, and a great insufficiency of preserved vege- 
tables, and with only coals enough to serve for twelve months' fuel, the 
only marvel to me is, that he ever returned to relate his sufferings. 
They are only to be equaled by those of the navigator " James," in 
Hudson Bay, two centuries earlier. God forbid that I should be 
thought to cast one reflection upon those warm-hearted Americans who 
came nobly forward and said, " We too will aid in Arctic enterprise ;" 
but the fact is that enthusiasm and high courage, without proper 
knowledge and equipment, on such service, infiillibly lead to the suffer- 
ing which Dr. Kane's followers endured; and it is ^^a^ which best 
explains how it was, that whilst our sailors, far beyond the Esquimaux, 
waxed fjit and fastidious, Kane's poor followers had to eat the raw flesh 
of animals to avert the ravages of scurvy, brought on by a poisonous 
dietary of salt meat. This much to meet the objections of those who 
point to Dr. Kane's thrilling narrative with a view to frighten us from 
Arctic exploration ; and I may add, that I know well that chivalrous 
man never penned those touching episodes to frighten men from high 
enterprise, but rather to caution us to avoid his mistakes, and to show 
us how nobly the worst evils may be borne when the cause is a good 
one."* 

The narrative of that expedition is before the reader in this volume. 
When first given to the world, it excited an intense interest and drew 
forth universal eulogy. AH classes were penetrated and touched by 
the story so simply, so modestly, so eloquently told. Autograph let- 
ters from the tnost eminent names in every walk of life were written in 
its praise. Medals and other costly testimonials were sent by the Queen 
of England, by different Legislatures in our own country, and by scien- 
tific associations throughout the world. Tlic mere casual notices of 
the press, as collected by his friend Mr. Childs, the publisher, fill sev- 
eral albums of folio size. ^ 

But the recipient of these nonors was not destined himself long to 
enjoy them. To the seeds of former diseases never fully eradicated, 
had been added that terrible scourge of Arctic life, the scurvy, together 

* Paper on the Exploration of the North Polar Rcpcion, road before tlie Royal 
Geographical Society, Jan. 23d, 18G5, by Captain Sherard Osborne, R. N., C. B. 



milf ,1 
"!l .ft 




LIFE OF DR. KANE. 11 

■with the exhausting Hterary labors incident to the publication of this 
narrative. Entirely underestimating those labors, (of which indeed but 
few can form an adequate conception,) he had been quite too thought- 
less of the claims of a body he had so long been accustomed to subject 
to his purpose, and only awoke to a discovery of the error when it was 
too late. With this melancholy conviction, he announced the comple- 
tion of the work to a friend in the modest and touching sentence : — 
" The book, poor as it is, has been my coffin." 

He left the country for England under a presentiment that he should 
never return. For the first time in his life, departure was shaded with 
foreboding. It was indeed an alarming symptom to find that iron 
nerve which hitherto had sustained him under shocks apparently not 
less severe, thus beginning to falter ; and yet even then the great pur- 
pose of his life he had not wholly abandoned, but, in spite of the most 
serious entreaties, was already projecting another Arctic Expedition of 
research and rescue.* Before, however, he could make known his plans, 
or even receive the honors awaiting him, successive and more virulent 
attacks of disease obliged him, under medical advice, to seek the last 
resorts of the invalid. Attended by his faithful friend Morton, he 
sailed for Cuba, where he was joined by his mother and two of his 
brothers, and devotedly nursed during a lingering and painful illness, 
until his death on the 16th of February, 1857. 

No man of his age was ever more proudly and tenderly lamented. 
The journey with his remains from Havana to New Orleans, and thence 
through the Western States to Philadelphia, became but one long 
funeral triumph, with the learned, the noble, and the good mingling in 
its train. State and civic authorities, literary, scientific, and religious 
bodies, followed his bier from city to city with lavish shows of grief, 
until at length the national obsequies were completed in the Hall of 
Independence, in the church of his childhood, and at the grave of his 
kindred. 

Dr. Kane, so far from being one of those mere personages who move 
in a halo of applause, had only to be known in order to convert the 
coldest criticism into sympathy with the popular feeling. Whatever 
faults belonged to him — and his nature was too rich and strong to be 
without them — yet the man himself was fully worthy of his mission, 
and had been actually endowed with gifts and traits quite as remark- 

* The particular project to which he then reverted with special interest, was one 
which he had entertained in 1852, looking to a combined land and sea expedition 
down Mackenzie's River, and through Behring's Straits. See Paper on Alaski, 
lately read by his brother and literary executor, General T, L. Kane, before the 
American Geographical Society. 



12 LIFEOFDR.KANE. 

able as any of tlie circumstances wliich conspired to make liira an object 
of such general admiration. 

When at his prime, before disease had begun to waste his frame, his 
personal appearance was extremely youthful and handsome, almost to 
the degree of a feminine delicacy of form and feature, with an air of 
elegance and fashion, suggestive at first sight of anything but hardy 
exploits and physical endurance. But as his character matured, the 
lines of his face revealed the energy and purpose within. There was a 
certain ^^?'e6^e«ce which diverled attention from his deficient stature. 

Temperate in meat and drink, he had none of the small vices which 
deprave the body, but was rather in danger of neglecting, or overtask- 
ing it, by the reckless energy with which he subjected it to his behests. 
The stimulus with which he repaired the waste of mental application 
was natural rather than artificial. He would leave the manuscripts of 
his book, to seek relaxation in a midnight ride upon his favorite stallion 
" Gaona," or in a rapid walk before breakfast. lie was a splendid 
horseman and marksman. In the excitements of the chase he had the 
keenest relish, and yet for suffering animal creatures often showed a 
tenderness that in another mio-ht have seemed sentimental. 

Natural scenery and objects he surveyed with the eye of an artist as 
well as that of trained scientific observation. His journals in all parts 
of the world were filled with sketches, some of them finished pictures, 
others mere pen-and-ink outlines with verbal notes. " Could they be 
placed before the public," says the artist who illustrated this work, 
"they would add still further, if that were possible, to his reputation 
as an Arctic explorer." 

His aff"ections for home and kindred were absolute passions. In his 
love for his mother especially, he was a child to the last. His imagin- 
ation strove to brighten even the Arctic waste with dear and familiar 
associations. The ice-bound harbor in which he was imprisoned was 
made to echo with Tiames oftcnest heard at home. He was really 
prouder to call a new land or river after one of his own kinsmen, than 
to christen it for a Washino-ton or a Tennyson ; and the sledcje in 
which he sought the object of a world-wide fame was most precious in 
his eyes as a memorial of his brother "Little Willie." 

Ills heart, indeed, was as warm as it was large and noble. No ele- 
vation and vastness in his schemes of philanthropy, no absorption in 
their pursuit, and no reputation gained by their success, ever made him 
insensible to the claims of the humblest upon its regards. Throughout 
life he had numerous dependants who looked to him for relief and 
maintenance, and at every step he performed acts of kindness with an 



LIFE OF DR. KANE. 13 

micalculating generosity. In one of his voyages he saved the life of 
an infant whose mother was too ill to nurse it, by himself taking entire 
charge of the little sufferer. A young orphaned midshipman, with 
whom he read the Bible and Shakspeare on the voyage to Brazil, when 
found to be dying of consumption, was taken home with him and ten- 
derly nursed until his death as one of the family. It would have been 
strange if such affluent affection had not been, in some instances, lav- 
ished upon an unworthy object, as when a young culprit whom he 
sought to reform by bringing him under the home influences, was sud- 
denly missing with some valuable jewelry. Bat that knightly romance 
and simplicity tinging his ardent nature, if ever quixotic in the eyes of 
the prudent, could never have exposed him to the serious misappre- 
hension of any but inferior souls. 

The writer of this sketch, as the eulogist at the obsequies of Dr. 
Kane, gave an expression of the public estimate which has since been 
o'nly confirmed by his more intimate knowledge, and he can not now 
do better than here to reproduce so much of it as relates to his moral 
traits and achievements."^ 

" As a votary of science, he will indeed receive fitting tributes. 
There will not be wanting those who shall do justice to that ardent 
thirst for truth, which in him amounted to one of the controlling pas- 
sions; to that intellect so severe in induction, yet sagacious in conjec- 
ture ; and to those contributions, so various and valuable, to the existing 
stock of human knowledge. But his memory will not be cherished 
alone in philosophic minds. Ilis is not a name to be honored only 
within the privileged circles of the learned. There is for him another 
laurel, greener even than that which science weaves for her most gifted 
sons. He is endeared to the popular heart as its chosen ideal of the 
finest sentiment that adorns our earthly nature. 

"Philanthropy, considered as among things which are lovely and of 
good report, is the flower of human virtue. Of all the passions that 
have their root in the soil of this present life, there is none which, 
when elevated into a conscious duty, is so disinterested and pure. In 
the domestic affections, there is something of mere blind instinct; in 
friendship, there is the limit of congeniality; in patriotism, there are 
the restrictions of local attachment and national antipathy; but in that 
love of race which seeks its object in man as man, of whatever kindred, 
creed, or clime, earthly morality appears divested of the last dross of 
selfishness, and challenges our highest admiration and praise. 

* See Report of the Joint Committee appointed to receive the remains and con- 
duct the obsequies of the late Ehsha Kent Kane, in Dr. Elder's Biography. Funeral 
Discourse delivered in the Second Presbyterian Church. 



14 LIFE OF DR. KANE. 

"Providence, who governs the world by ideas, selects the fit occasions 
and men for their illustration. In an age when philanthropic senti- 
ments, through the extension of Christianity and civilization, are on 
the increase, a fit occasion for their display is offered in the perils of a 
bold explorer, for whose rescue a cry of anguished affection rings in 
the ears of the nations ; and the man found adequate to that occasion 
is he whose death we mourn. 

" If there was every thing congruous in the scene of the achieve- 
ment, — laid, as it was, in those distant regions where the lines of geog- 
raphy converge beyond all the local distinctions that divide and sepa- 
rate man from his fellow, and among regions of cold and darkness, and 
disease and famine, that would task to their utmost the powers of 
human endurance — not less suited was the actor who was to enter upon 
that scene and enrich the world with such a lesson of heroic benefi- 
cence. Himself of a country estranged from that of the imperiled 
explorers, the simple act of assuming the task of their rescue was»a 
beautiful tribute to the sentiment of national amity ; while, as his war- 
rant for undertaking it, he seemed wanting in no single qualification. 
To a scientific education and the experience of a cosmopolite, he joined 
an assemblage of moral qualities so rich in their separate excellence, 
and so rare in their combination, that it is diflfiicult to effect their 
analysis. 

" Conspicuous among them was an exalted, yet practical benevolence. 
It was the crowning charm of his character, and a controlling motive 
in his perilous enterprise. Other promptings indeed there were, nei- 
ther suppressed, nor in themselves to be depreciated. But that passion 
for adventure, that love of science, that generous ambition, which stim- 
ulated his youthful exploits;, appear now undvr the check and guidance 
of a still nobler impulse. It is his sympathy with the lost and suffer- 
ing, and the duteous conviction that it may lie in his power to liberate 
them i'vom their i(;y dungeon, which thrill his heart and nerve him to 
his hardy task. In his avowed aim, the interests of geography were to 
be suhoidinate to the claims of humanity. And neither the entreaties 
of affection, nor the imperiling of a fame, which to a less earnest spirit 
might have seemed too precious to hazard, could swerve him from the 
generous purpose. 

" And yet this was not a benevolence which could exhaust itself in any 
mere dazzling, visionaiy project. It was as practical as it was compre- 
hensive. It could descend to all the minutiae of personal kindness, and 
gracefully disguise itself even in the most menial offices. When de- 
feated in its great object, and forced to resign the proud hope of a 



LIFE OF DR. KANE. 15 

pliilanthropist, it turns to lavish itself on bis suffering comrades, whom 
he leads almost to forget the commander in the friend. With unselfish 
assiduity and cheerful patience he devotes himself as a nurse and coun- 
sellor to relieve their wants, and buoy them up under the most appall- 
ing misfortunes ; and, in those still darker seasons, when the expedition 
is threatened with disorganization, conquers them, not less by kindness 
than by address. Does a party withdraw from him under opposite 
counsels, they are assured, in the event of their return, of a " brother's 
welcome." Are tidings brought him that a portion of the little band 
are forced to halt, he knows not where in the snowy desert, he is off 
through the midnight cold for their rescue, and finds his reward in the 
grateful assurance, " They knew that he would come." In sickness he 
tends them like a brother, and at death drops a tear of manly sensi- 
bility on their graves. Even the wretched savages, who might be sup- 
posed to have forfeited the claim, share in his kindly attentions ; and 
it is with a touch of true human feeling that he parts from them at last, 
as ' children of the same Creator.' 

"Then, as the fitting support of this noble quality, there was also an 
indomitable energy. It was the iron column, around whose capital that 
delicate lily-work was woven. His was not a benevolence which must 
waste itself in mere sentiment, for want of a power of endurance ade- 
quate to support it through hardship and peril. In that slight pliysical 
frame, suggestive only of refined culture and intellectual grace, there 
dwelt a sturdy force of will, which no combination of material terrors 
seemed to appall, and, by a sort of magnetic impulse, subjected all 
inferior spirits to its control. It was the calm power of reason and 
duty asserting their superiority over mere brute courage, and compelling 
the instinctive homage of Herculean strength and prowess. 

" With what firm yet conscientious resolve does he quell the rising 
symptoms of rebellion which threaten to add the terrors of mutiny to 
those of famine and disease ! And all through that stern battle with 
Nature in her most savage haunts, how he ever seems to turn his mild 
front toward her frowning face, if in piteous appealing, yet not less in 
fixed resignation ! 

"But while in that. character, benevolence appeared supported by 
energy and patience, so, too, was it equipped with a most marvelous 
tact. He brought to his beneficent task not merely the resources of 
acquired skill, but a native power of adapting himself to emergencies, 
and a fertility in devising expedients, which no occasion ever seemed to 
baffle. Immured in a dreadful seclusion, where the combined terrors 
of Nature forced him into all the closer contact with the passions of 



16 LIFE OF DR. KANE. 

man, lie not only rose, by his energy, superior to tliem both, but, by 
his ready executive talent, converted each to liis ministry. Even the 
■wild, iinnates of that icy world, from the mere stupid wonder with 
which at first they regarded his imported marvels of civilization, were, at 
length, forced to descend to a genuine respect and love, as they saw him 
compete with them in the practice of their own rude, stoical virtues. 

" To such more sterling qualities were joined the graces of an affluent 
cheerfulness^ that never deserted liim in the darkest hours — a delicate 
and capricious hunior, glancing among the most rugged realities like 
the sunshine upon the rocks — and, above all, that invariable stamp 
of true greatness, a beautiful modest tf^ ever sufficiently content with 
itself to be above the necessity of pretension. These were like the 
ornaments of a Grecian building, which, though thuy may not enter 
into the effect of the outline, are found to impart to it, the more 
nearly it is surveyed, all the grace and finish of the most exquisite 
sculpture. 

"And yet strong and fair as were the proportions of that character in 
its more- conspicuous aspects, we should still have been disappointed 
did we not find albeit hidden deep beneath them, a firm basis of reli- 
gious seiitiiiient. For all serious and thoughtful minds this is the purest 
charm of those graphic volumes in which he has recorded the story of 
his wonderful escapes and deliverances. There is every where shining 
through its pages a chastened spirit, too familiar with human weakness 
to oveilook a Providence in his trials, and too conscious of human in- 
significance to disdain its recognition. Now, in his lighter, more pen- 
sive moods, we see it rising, on the wing of a devout fancy, into that 
region where piety becomes also poetry : 

' I have ti'odden the deck and the floes, wdien tlie life of earth seemed 
snspendetl, its UK^vements, its sounds, its colorings, its companionships; 
and as 1 looked on the radiant hemisphere, circling above me, as if 
rendering worship to the unseen centre of light, I have ejaculated in 
hnnuiity of spirit, ' Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him?' 
And then T have thought of the kindly world we had left, with its 
revolving siiidiglit and shadow, and the other stars that gla<lden it in 
their clianges. and the hearts that warmed to us there, till I lost myself 
in the memories of those who are not; and they bore me back to the 
stars ag lin.' 

"Then, in graver emergencies, it appears as a liabitual resource, to 
which he has come in conscious dependence: 

'A trust, based on experience as well as on promises, buoyed me up 



LIFE OF DR. KANE. l7 

at the worst of times. Call it fatalism, as you ignorantly may, there 
is that in the story of every eventful life which teaches the inefficiency 
of human means, and the present control of a Supreme Agency. See 
how often relief has come at the moment of extremity, in forms 
strangely unsought, almost at the time unwelcome ; see, still more, how 
the back has been strengthened to its increasing burdens, and the heart 
cheered by some conscious influence of an unseen Power.' 

" And, at length, we find it settling into that assurance which belongs 
to an experienced faith and hope : — 

' I never doubted for an instant, that the same Providence which 
had guarded us through the long darkness of winter was still watching 
over us for good, and that it was yet in reserve for us — for some ; I 
dared not hope for all — to bear back the tidings of our rescue to a 
Christian land.' 

" We hear no profane oath vaunted from that little ice-bound islet of 
human life, where man has been thrown so helplessly into the hands of 
God ; but rather in its stead, murmured amid the wild uproar of the 
storm, the daily prayer, 'Accept our thanks and restore us to our 
homes.' Let us believe that a faith which supported him through trials 
worse than death, did not fail him when death itself came. 

"In the near approach of that last moment, he was tranquil and com- 
posed. With too little strength either to support or indicate any thing 
of rapture, he was yet sufiiciently conscious of his condition to per- 
form some final acts befitting the solemn emergency. In reference to 
those who had deeply injured him, he enjoined cordial forgiveness. To 
each of the watching group around him, his hand is given in the fond 
pressure of a final parting; and then, as if sensible that his ties to earth 
are loosening, he seeks consolation from the requested reading of such 
Scripture sentences as had been the favorite theme of his thoughtful 
hours. 

"Now he hears those soothing beatitudes which fell from the lips of 
the Man of Sorrows in successive benediction. Then he will have 
repeated to him that sweet, sacred pastoral — 

' The Lord is my Shepherd ; I shall not want. He maketh me 
to lie down in green pastures : he leadeth me beside the still waters. 
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will 
fear no evil ; for Thou art with me : Thy rod and Thy staffj they com- 
fort me.' 

"At length are recited the consolatory words with which the Saviour 
took leave of his weeping disciples : — 

'■ Let not your heart be troubled : ye believe in God, believe also in 
2 



18 



LIFE OF DK. KANE, 



me. In my Father's house are many mansions ; if it were not so, I 
would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.' 

" And at last, in the midst of this comforting recital, he is seen to 
expire — so gently that the reading still proceeds some moments after 
other watchers have become aware that he is already beyond the reach 
of any mortal voice. Thus, in charity with all mankind, and with 
words of the Redeemer in his ear, conveyed by tones the most familiar 
and beloved on earth, his spirit passed from the world of men." 

With these last and subhmest lessons of his life, it is fitting that 
this sketch should close. Let every American youth, who reads his 
story, remember that, in an age of materialism when old faiths seem to 
be decaying, he illustrated, as no man ever did before, the spiritual ele- 
ments of our nature, and the entire compatibility of deep religious con- 
viction, not only with humane eftbrts, but with physical researches and 
with earthly toils, successes, and honors. He will not indeed have 
lived in vain should history hereafter rank him among the harbingers 
of that peaceful era when charity shall become heroic, and science be 
reconciled to religion. 




^^<:> 




ExigravBil 'by RWhiteciiurch 




;IR JOHN ia< ANKLXN , fAl'T p N 



CHAPTER I. 
THE ARCTIC REGIONS. 

Tlie Arctic Circle, as laid down on our maps, is a 
line drawn around tlie earth, parallel witli the equator, 
and distant in every direction twenty-tliree degrees 
and twenty-eight minutes from the North Pole. It 
separates the North Frigid from the North Temperate 
Zone. Within this circle lie the Arctic Ocean ; nearly 
all of Greenland ; Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla and 
other islands ; northerly portions of Norway, Sweden, 
Lapland, Russia, Siberia, Alaska, and British America ; 
and the almost unknown regions north-westerly of 
Greenland. 

The Arctic Ocean is enclosed between the northern 
limits of Europe, Asia, and America. Several large 
rivers from the three continents flow northerly into it 
or its tributary waters. It has an area of over four 
million square miles, and girds the Pole with an ice- 
locked coast of about three thousand leagues. It is a 
mysterious sea, and has for centuries baffled the re- 
search of navigators. 

But the Arctic Circle, lying between latitudes sixty- 
six and sixty-seven degrees, must not be considered 
as the boundary of the Arctic Regions, for the char- 
acteristic temperatures and phenomena of far higher 
latitudes extend with some exceptions many degrees 

19 



20 THE ARCTIC EEGIONS. 

farther to the south. Iceland, which may well he 
considered an Arctic country, lies outside this circle ; 
and the researches of the lamented Hall durincr his 
first expedition were made considerably below this 
line, and it is not known that he reached much higher 
latitudes durino* his later residence on the northern 
shores of Hudson's Bay. 

Within these h}^erborean regions Nature is marked 
by the most stupendous features, and the forms she 
assumes differ from her attitudes in our milder cli- 
mates almost as widely as if they belonged to another 
planet. The scenery is a^vful and dreary, yet abound- 
ing in striking, sublime, and beautiful objects. The 
sun for several months of the year is totally withdrawn, 
leaving behind him a desert waste of relentless frost, 
and the darkness of a prolonged winter which broods 
over the frozen realm, save when the magnificent 
Aurora lights up the gloom, or the moon, which for 
days continually circles around the horizon, reveals 
the weird beauty and desolation of the scene. 

Dr. Kane, in the most fascinating narrative of his 
second expedition describes an Arctic mooidight night 
as follows : — 

^' A grander scene than our bay by moonlight can 
hardly be conceived. It is more dream-like and super- 
natural than a com])ination of earthly features. 

"The moon is nearly full, and the dawning sun- 
light, mingling with hers, invests everything with an 
atmosphere of ashy gray. It clothes the gnarled hills 
that make the lioi'izon of our bay, shadows out the 
teiTaces in dull definition, grows darker and colder as 
it sinks into the fiords, and broods sad and dreary 
upon the ridges and measureless plains of ice that 
make up the I'est of our field of view. Rising above 



THE ARCTIC EEGIOj^TS. 21 

all this, and sliading down into it in strange combina- 
tion, is tlie intense moonliglit, glittering on every crag 
and spire, tracing tlie outline of tlie background with, 
contrasted brightness, and printing its fantastic profiles 
on the snow-field. It is a landscape such as Milton or 
Dante might imagine, — inorganic, desolate, mysterious. 
I have come down from deck with the feelings of a 
man who has looked upon a world unfinished by the 
hand of its Creator." 

At length the sun reappears above the horizon, and 
as a compensation for his long absence shines uninter- 
ruptedly for the balance of the year, although his 
rays are frequently obscured by mist and fog. This 
continual sunlip-ht strikes the traveler as the strano;est 
phenomenon of the Arctic summer. 

As the sun acquires elevation, his power increases. 
The progress of the frost is checked, the snow grad- 
ually wastes away, the ice dissolves, and vast frag- 
ments of it are precipitated along the shores with the 
crash of thunder. The ocean is now unbound, and 
its icy dome disrupted with tremendous fracture; 
enormous fields of ice thus set afloat are broken up 
by the violence of winds and currents, or drift away 
to the south, and the icebergs take uj) their stately 
march. 

The annual formation of ice vdthin the Arctic world 
is a beautiful provision of Nature for mitigating the 
excessive inequality of temperature. Were only dry 
land there exposed to the sun, it would be absolutely 
scorched by his incessant beams in summer, and 
pinched in the darkness of winter by the most intense 
and penetrating cold. None of the animal or vegeta- 
ble tribes could at all support such extremes. But in 
the actual arrangement, the surplus heat of summer 



22 THE ARCTIC EEGIONS. 

is spent in melting away the ice ; and its deficiency in 
winter is partly supplied by tlie influence of the pro- 
gress of congelation. As long as ice remains to thaw 
or water to freeze, the temperature of the atmosphere 
can never vaiy beyond certain limits. 

For what is known of the Arctic regions the world 
is indebted, principally, to the expeditions which, from 
time to time, have been sent out by different nations — 
some to search for new routes to China and the In- 
dies, some to look for the North Pole, and some, in 
later times, for the relief of the lost navigator. Sir 
John Franklin. 

The thrilling experiences and observations of many 
of these expeditions have been written out by mem- 
bers thereof, and the perusal of their narratives will 
give the reader a more vivid and far more interest- 
ing conception of life and nature in the frigid zone 
than can be obtained from the study of volumes of 
didactic description. As it is the plan of this book 
to give the history of these expeditions, and to do it 
to some extent in the words of the explorers them- 
selves, full information as to the characteristic features, 
phenomena, inhabitants, and animal and vegetable 
life of the Arctic regions will be found in succeeding 
chapters. 




^If» of the 

\\ AMEjRiCAN 

POLAR SEA. 

4 ^f"' 

















CHAPTER II. 

EARLY DISCOVERIES AND HISTORY. 

One thousand years ago tlie mariners of tlie Scan- 
dinavian Peninsula were tlie boldest of navigators, and 
the most successful ones of their age. They possessed 
neither the sextant nor the compass ; they had neither 
charts nor chronometers to guide them ; but trusting 
solely to fortune and their own indomitable courage, 
they fearlessly launched forth into the vast ocean. 
Their voyages, distinguished by a strange mixture of 
commerce, piracy, and discovery, added no little to the 
geographical knowledge of their day. To quit their 
bleak regions in search of others still more bleak 
would have been wholly foreign to their views; yet 
as the sea was covered with their sails, chance and 
tempest sometimes drove them in a direction other 
than southerly. 

In the year 861, Naddodr, a ^Norwegian pirate, was 
drifted by contrary winds far to the north. For sev- 
eral days no land was visible; then suddenly the 
snow-clad mountains of Iceland were seen to rise above 
the mists of the ocean. The viking landed on the 
island, and gave it the name of Snowland, but dis- 
covered no traces of man. Three years afterward, 
Gardar and Flocke, two Swedes, visited it ; and hav- 
ing found a great quantity of drift-ice collected on the 



24 ICELAND. 

north side of it, they gave it the name of Iceland, 
which it still bears. In 874, Ingolf and Leif, two 
famous Norwegian adventurers, carried a colony to 
this inhospitable region — the latter having eniiched 
it with the booty which he ravaged from England. 

Al)out this time Harold, the Fair-haired, had be- 
come the despotic master of all Norway. Many of 
his former equals submitted to his yoke ; Init others, 
animated by a love of lil)erty, emigrated to Iceland. 
Such were the attractions which the island at that 
time presented, that not half a century elapsed before 
all its inhal)itable portions were occupied by settlers 
from Norway, Sweden, Denmark Scotland, and Ire- 
land. 

Iceland might as well have been called Fireland, 
for all of its forty thousand square miles have origin- 
ally been upheaved from the depths of the waters 
by volcanic action ; and its numerous volcanoes have 
many times brought ruin upon whole districts. The 
most frisrhtful visitation occurred in 1783, and its 
direful effects were long felt throughout the island, 
over which, for a whole year, hung a dull cano2)y of 
cinder-laden clouds. 

Pestilence, famine, and severe winters have also 
from time to time added many a mournful page to 
Iceland's long annals of sorrow. Once she had over 
a hundred thousand inhabitants, — now she has scarcely 
half that number; then she had many rich and power- 
ful families, — now mediocrity or poverty is the universal 
lot ; then she was renowned as the seat of learning and 
the cradle of literature, — now, were it not for her 
r(!markable ])hysical features, no traveler would ever 
thiidv of landing on lier rugged shores. 

In winter, when an almost perpetual night covers 



GKEENLAIS^D. 27 

tlie wastes of tliis fire-born land, and the waves of a 
stormy ocean thunder against its shores, imagination 
can hardly picture a more desolate scene ; but in sum- 
mer the rugged nature of Iceland invests itself with 
many a charm. Then the eye reposes with delight 
on green valleys and crystal lakes, on the purple hills 
or snow-capped mountains rising in Alpine grandeur 
above the distant horizon, and the stranger might 
almost be tempted to exclaim with her patriotic chil- 
dren, " Iceland is the fairest land under the sun." 

The colonization of Iceland proved the stepping- 
stone to further discoveries, although over a century 
ela23sed before any progress was made in a westerly 
direction ; then, 970, an Icelander named Gunnbjorn, 
first saw the hi£>:h mountain coast of Greenland. 

Soon afterwards, a Norwegian named Thorwald, 
with his son, the famous Eric the Red, flying their 
country on account of homicide, took refuge in Iceland. 
Here Thorwald died, and Eric, his hands again imbued 
"with blood, was obliged, in 982, to once more take 
refuge on the high seas. He sailed westward in quest 
of the land discovered by Gunnbjorn, and ere long 
reached its shores. Having entered a spacious creek, 
he spent the winter on a pleasant adjacent island. In 
the following season, pursuing his discoveries, he ex- 
plored the continent, and was delighted with the 
freshness and verdure of its coast. 

Eric afterwards returned to Iceland, and by his in- 
viting description of the new country, which he named 
Greenland, induced great numbers to sail v/ith him 
and settle there. They started in 985, with twenty- 
five vessels, but on account of foul weather only four- 
teen of them reached the destined harbor. Other 
emigrants soon followed, and in a few years all of 



28 THE NORTHMEN IN A:\IERICA. 

SoTitliern Greenland was occupied by flonrisliing 
colonies. 

An adventurous young Icelander named Biarni, 
wlio was in Norway when Eric's colonists sailed for 
Greenland, on returning home and finding that his 
father had gone with them, vowed that he would 
spend the winter with his father, as he had always 
done, and set forth to find the little settlement on the 
unknown shores of Greenland. 

A northerly gale sprung up and for many days he 
was driven to the southAvard of his course. At last 
he fell in with a coast in the west, wooded and some- 
what hilly. No landing was made, and the anxious 
mariners, sailing for two days to the northward, found 
another land, low and level, and overgrown with 
woods. Not recognizing the mountains nor meeting 
w^ith icebergs, Biarni sailed northerly, and in three 
days came upon a great island with high mountains, 
much ice, and desolate shores. He was then driven 
before a violent south-west wdnd for four days, when 
by singular good fortune he reached the Greenland 
settlement which he was seeking. 

From the internal evidence afforded l)y the dates 
and the causes, as w^ell as from the corroboration of 
subsequent expeditions, it would appear that these 
mariners brouglit up on the coast of New England. 
The first land seen, judging from the descriptions, 
was probably Nantucket or Cape Cod. Two days' 
sailing w^ould easily bring them to the level and forest- 
covered shores of Nova Scotia, and three more to the 
bleak and precipitous coast of Newfoundland. From 
that island to the southern extremity of Greenland, 
the distance is ])ut six hundred miles, which a vessel, 
running before a favorable gale, might readily accom- 
plish A\dthin the given time. 



THE NOKTHMEN IN AMEBIC A. 29 

In tlie year 999, Leif, a son of Eric, having visited 
tlie coast of Norway, was induced, by the zealons and 
earnest solicitation of King Olaf Tryggvason, to em- 
brace the Christian faith ; and, carrying with him some 
monks, he found, through their ministry, no great 
difficulty in persuading his father and the rest of the 
settlers to forsake the rites of Paganism. Having 
heard Biarni much blamed at Norway for neglecting 
to prosecute his discoveries, Leif was stimulated to 
undertake a voyage in quest of new lands. He bought 
the vessel of Biarni, and with thirty-five men, some 
of whom had been on the former voyage, set sail in 
the year 1000. 

Probably the first lands sighted by him were the 
same as those which Biarni had already discovered, 
but they were now taken in an inverse order. Hav- 
ing steered to the westward of an island (probably 
Nantucket) the voyagers "passed up a river and 
thence into a lake." This channel, it would seem, was 
the Seaconnet River, the eastern outlet of Narragan- 
sett Bay, which leads to the beautiful lake-like expanse 
now known as Mount Hope Bay. From the great 
number of wild grapes found here the whole country 
received the name of Vinland. 

Numerous other voyages, according to Icelandic 
manuscripts, were made from Greenland and Iceland 
to the shores of Vinland. To-day inscriptions are 
found which were perhaps the handiwork of these 
adventurers ; but the discoveries they made appear to 
have been forgotten like the Greenland colonists, and 
it has not been uncommon for modern students to 
doubt the whole story of the discovery of America by 
the Northmen. Many, however believe in it, and 
some propose to celebrate our centennial anniversary 



30 THE LOST COLONISTS. 

by erecting in Madison, Wis., a monument to tlie 
Viking wlio first discovered America. 

In 1477 Columbus visited Iceland, and voyaged a 
hundred leagues beyond it, probably to the westward, 
and, it may be, came near reviving the ancient discov- 
eries of the Northmen, and tracking the steps of Bi 
arni, Leif, and Thoriinn to the long lost Vinland. 

The original settlement of Greenland began about 
the southern promontory, near Cape Farewell, and 
stretched along the coast in a north-westerly direction. 
Farther north, and probably extending as high as the 
latitude of sixty-six degrees, was a second settlement. 
The former is said to have included, at its most flour- 
ishing period, twelve parishes and two convents ; the 
latter contained four parishes. Between the two dis-. 
tricts lay an uninhabitable region of seventy miles 
The whole population was about six thousand. For 
some centuries a commercial intercourse was main- 
tained with Norway ; but the trade was subsequently^ 
seized as an exclusive privilege of the Danish court. 

The colonists of Greenland led a life of hardship 
and severe privations. They dwelt in hovels sur- 
rounded by mountains of perpetual ice ; they never 
tasted bread, but subsisted on the flsh which they 
caught, joined to a little milk obtained from their 
starving cows; and, with seal-skins and the tusks of 
the walrus, they purc^hased from the traders who occa- 
sionally visited tliem, the wood required for fuel and 
the construction of their huts. 

About the year 1730, the natives of the country, or 
Esquimaux, whom the Norwegian settlers had in con- 
tempt called Divarf.% attacked the colonies. The 
scanty population was enfeebled by repeated alarms ; 
and that dreadful pestilence, termed the Black Deaths 



THEIR SUPPOSED FATE. 



31 



wMcli raged over Europe from tlie year 1402 to 1404, 
at last extended its ravages to Greenland, and nearly 
completed tlie destruction. 

In 1418 a hostile fleet, suspected to be English, laid 
waste the country. Political troubles and wars in 
Scandinavia at a later date, caused Greenland to be 
neglected, and finally forgotten ; and it is believed 
that its last colonists either retreated to Iceland or 
were destroyed by the Esquimaux about the com- 
mencement of the sixteenth century. 

In 1581 and 1605, expeditions were sent out from 
Denmark to see if any inhabitants of Norse origin 
still dwelt in Greenland ; but none could be found, 
althoudi traces of the ancient settlement were seen 
on the western coast. 

An idea formerly prevailed that a colony had also 
been planted on the east side of Greenland, which 
had been cut oif from the rest of the world by vast 
barriers of ice accumulating on the shore. The 
problem was, whether the ill-fated people had survived 
the catastrophe, or been entombed in snow and ice, 
as the unhappy citizens of Pompeii were involved in 
a shower of volcanic ashes. Ships w^ere sent out at 
different times by Denmark for their relief, but it is 
now evident that no such settlement ever existed. 
The coast of Eastern Greenland is everywhere bold 
and rocky, and the interior of the country consists of 
clusters of mountains covered with eternal snows. 

In 1721, Hans Egede, a Norwegian pastor, who had 
long felt the deepest concern for the descendants of 
the old Christian communities of Greenland, in whose 
total destruction he could not believe, sailed from 
Bergen with his wife, four children, and forty colonists, 
having resolved to become the apostle of regenera- 



32 THE APOSTLE OF GREENLAND. 

ted Greenland. Tliey landed July 3d, and soon erect- 
ed a wooden eliapel at the location of tlie present set- 
tlement of Godthad. 

Altliougli Egede met Avitli severe trials, and was 
deserted by nearly all tlie settlers, lie persevered in 
sustaining his foothold in the country ; and in 1733 
the king of Denmark bestowed on the mission an annual 
grant of two thousand dollars, and sent three Moravian 
brothers to assist him. 

Egede returned to IN'orwayin 1735; during his long 
stay in Greenland he could find nothing in the physi- 
ognomy or language of the Esquimaux which pointed 
to an European origin. 

Dr. Kane visited this locality in 1853, and speaks 
of it as follows : — 

" While we were beating out of the fiord of Fisker- 
naes, I had an opportunity of visiting Lichtenfels, the 
ancient seat of the Greenland congregations, and one 
of the three Moravian settlements. I had read much 
of the history of its founders ; and it was with feelings 
almost of devotion, that I drew near the scene their 
labors had consecrated. 

" As we rowed into the shadow of its rock-embayed 
cove, every thing was so desolate and still, that we might 
have fancied ourselves outside the world of life ; even 
the dogs — those querulous, never-sleeping sentinels of 
the rest of the coast — gave no signal of our approach. 
Presently, a sudden turn around a projecting cliff 
brought into view a quaint old Silesian mansion, bris- 
tling with irregularly-disposed chimneys, its black over- 
hanging roof studded with dormer windows and 
crowned with an anti(pie belfry. 

"We were met, as we landed, l)y a couple of grave 
ancient men in sable jackets and close velvet skull- 




PISKERNAES — HOME OP HANS CHRISTIAN. 



^.^e?^«-*y5^ 




MORAVIAN SETTLEMENT AT LICHTENFELS. 



THE MORAVlAN^ MISSIONS. 35 

caps, sTicli as Vandyke or Kembrandt himself miglit 
have painted, wlio gave us a quiet but kindly welcome. 
All inside of the mansion-house — the furniture, the 
matron even the children — had the same time-sobered 
look. The sanded floor was dried by one of those huge 
white-tiled stoves, which have been known for gene- 
rations in the north of Europe ; and the stiff -backed 
chairs were evidently coeval with the first days of the 
settlement. The heavy-built table in the middle of 
the room was soon covered with its simple offerings of 
hospitality; and we sat around to talk of the lands we 
had come from and the chans-ino; wonders of the times. 

" We learned that the house dated back as far as 
the days of Matthew Stach ; built, no doubt, with the 
beams that floated so providentially to the shore some 
twenty-five years after the first landing of Egede ; and 
that it had been the home of the brethren who now 
greeted us, one for twenty-nine and the other twenty- 
seven years. The " Congregation Hall " was within 
the building, cheerless now with its empty benches ; a 
couple of French horns, all that I could associate with 
the gladsome piety of the Moravians, hung on each side 
the altar. Two dwelling-rooms, three chambers, and 
a kitchen, all under the same roof, made up the one 
structure of Lichtenf els. 

" Its kind-hearted inmates were not without intelli- 
gence and education. In spite of the formal cut of 
their dress, and something of the stiffness that belongs 
to a protracted solitary life, it was impossible not to 
recognise, in their demeanor and course of thought, 
the liberal spirit that has always characterized their 
church. Two of their " children," they said, had " gone 
to God " last year with the scurvy ; yet they hesitated 
at receiving a scanty supply of potatoes as a present 
from our store." 



SQ ESQUIMAUX OF NORTH GPwEE:N^LAND. 

The Dauisli colonies now in Greenland are scattered 
along some eiglit hundred miles of the western coast, 
and are more flourishing than the ancient settlements. 
The European population is only about one hundred 
and fifty — all in the service of the Danish company 
excejoting the missionaries — Avhile the native Esqui- 
maux of the district, among whom they live on good 
terms, are estimated at about nine thousand. 

Farther north, and cut off from civilization and their 
more favored brothers of the Danish neio'hborhoods 
by impassable glaciers, are other Esquimaux — nomads, 
who range over a narrow belt extending along the 
coast for six hundred miles. They were the neighbors 
of Dr. Kane during his t^vo ^vinters' imprisonment in 
Rensselaer Harbor. In his " Arctic Explorations," Dr. 
Kane pays an affecting tribute to their virtues and 
draws gloomy auguries of their future : — 

" It is with a feeling of melancholy that I recall these 
familiar names. They illustrate the trials and modes 
of life of a simple-minded people, for Avhom it seems to 
be decreed that the year must very soon cease to renew 
its changes. It ])ains me ^\lien I think of their ap- 
proaching destiny, — in the region of night and winter, 
where the -earth yields no fruit and the waters are 
locked, — without the resorts of skill or even the rude 
materials of art, and walled in from the world by 
barriers of ice without an outlet. 

" If you point to the east, inland, where the herds of 
reindeer run over the barren liills unmolested, — for 
they liave no means of capturing them, — they will cry 
" Serniik," "glacier;" and, question them as you may 
about the I'ange of their nation to the north and south, 
tlie answer is still the same, with a shake of the head, 
"Sermik, sermik-soak," "the great ice-wall;" there is 
no moi'e beyond. 



THE CABOTS AND THEIR VOYAGES. 37 

" They have no " kresuk," no wood. The drift-tim- 
ber whicli blesses their more southern brethren never 
reaches them. The bow and arrow are therefore un- 
known ; and the kayak, the national implement of the 
Greenlander, which, like the palm-tree to the natives 
of the tropics, ministers to almost every want, exists 
among them only as a legendary word." 

Though a long intercourse with Europeans has 
somewhat modified the character of the Southern 
Greenlanders, and acquainted them with some of the 
luxuries of civilization, they still retain to a great de- 
gree their former customs and modes of life. This is 
probably owing to the sparse population, and their 
vagrant life. Depending wholly upon the products 
of the chase for their food, they are most accom- 
plished hunters ; and the sea is the principal source of 
their sustenance. 

England narrowly missed sharing in the honor 
awarded to Columbus for his great achievement. 
After vainly soliciting Spain and Portugal for aid, 
that navigator sent his brother to Henry VII., with 
propositions which were at once accepted ; but before 
the return of his messenger, Columbus, under the 
auspices of Isabella, had started on his voyage. The 
news of his success excited much interest in England ; 
and the king granted to John Cabot and his three 
sons, a patent "to sail to all parts, countries, and seas," 
at their own expense, as explorers. Cabot was an 
Italian, once a " Merchant of Venice," then living 
in Bristol, England, where his son Sebastian was born 
about 1477. A subsequent residence in Venice had 
given the son a taste for maritime enterprises, which 
was increased by his learning the trade of making 
maps. 



38 THE LABEADOR COLONY. 

Tlie explorers, in a ship named the " Matthew," 
fitted out probably at the expense of the Cabots, sailed 
from Bristol in May, 1497. Sebastian, though only 
nineteen years of age, was entrusted with the com- 
mand, but was accompanied by his father. 

On the 24th of June, they beheld portions of the 
coast of Labrador and Newfoundland stretched out 
before them. This discovery of a continent (fourteen 
months before Columbus discovered the main land) 
caused the explorers little exultation, although the 
British claim to the thirteen colonies was primarily 
based thereon. The object of the voyage was to dis- 
cover a passage to India ; and to be obstructed by land 
displeased the mariners. Entering one of the chan- 
nels leading into Hudson's Bay, they continued on 
for several days, when the crew became despondent 
and insisted on returning. Cabot yielded to their 
clamors and sailed for England. 

In the Spring of 1498, Sebastian, with three hun- 
dred men, again set sail for the region he had discov- 
ered. These unfortunate people he landed on the 
bleak and inhospitable coast of Labrador, that they 
might form a settlement there, and then with the 
squadron renewed his search for the North-west pas- 
sage. On his return to the station, he found that the 
settlers had suffered intensely from cold and exposure. 
A number had already perished, and the balance were 
earned back to England. 

Cabot made a third voyage to the North-west in 
1517, and it is believed that he discovered the two 
straits which now bear the names of Davis and Hud- 
son. 

In the year 1500, Gasper Cortereal, of Portugal, 
sailed in search of a North-west passage. He reached 



PORTUGUESE EXPEDITIONS. 



39 



Labrador, and sailed a long distance along its coast, 
and then with, a number of natives on board returned 
home. The next year he guided two ships to the 
northern point of his former voyage, where he entered 
a strait ; here the vessels were separated by a tem- 
pest. One of them succeeded in extricating itself, and 
searched for some time in vain for its lost consort ; 
but that which had on board the gallant leader of the 
expedition returned no more, and no trace could ever 
be obtained of its fate. 

The next year, Miguel Cortereal sailed with three 
ships in search of his brother. Two of the vessels re- 
turned in safety, but Miguel and his crew were never 
heard from. A third brother wished to search for his 
lost kindred, but the king would not allow him to do 
so. 

French expeditions, under Verazzani (1523) and 
Cartier (1524) were equally unsuccessful in their 
search for the north-west passage. 




^ \^^r^ r ^ 



CHAPTER III. 

ENGLISH EXPEDITIONS TO THE NORTH- 
EAST. 

(aVILLOUGHBY CHANCELOR BURKOUGHS ETC.) 

In 1553, after a long slumber, tlie spirit of discov- 
ery in England was again aroused, and a voyage was 
planned vdth a view to reach by way of tlie noi-tli 
and north-east, the celebrated regions of India and 
Cathay. 

Sebastian Cabot was prominent in forwarding this 
enterprise, and though too old to lead the expedition 
he drew up the instructions under which it sailed. 
In it the mariners were warned not to be too much 
alarmed when they saw the natives dressed in lions' 
and bears' skins, with long bows and arrows, as this 
formidable appearance was often assumed merely to 
inspire terror. He told them, that there were persons 
armed with bows, who swam naked, in various seas, 
havens, and rivers, " desirous of the bodies of men, 
which they covet for meat," and against whom diligent 
watch must be kept night and day. He exliorted 
them to use the utmost circiunspection in their deal- 
ings with these strangers, and if invited to dine with 
any h)rd or ruler, to go well armed, and in a posture 
of defence. 

The ccmimand of the expedititm wds given to Sir 
40 



EXPEDITIOIJ UNDER SIR HUGH WILLOUGHBY. 41 

Hngli Willougliby, and three vessels having been 
fitted out with great care, sailed from England in the 
month of May. The court and a great multitude of 
people witnessed their departure, and the occasion was 
one of great interest and excitement. Willoughby 
was furnished by King Edward, with a letter of intro- 
duction, addressed to all "kings, princes, rulere, judges, 
and governors of the earth," in which free passage and 
other favors were asked for the explorers; and if 
granted, he concluded, — " We promise, by the God of 
all things that are contained in heaven, earth, and the 
sea, and by the life and tranquillity of our kingdoms, 
that we will with like humanity accept your servants, 
if at any time they shall come to our kingdoms." 

On the 14th of July the explorers were near the 
coast of I^orway, and on approaching the North Cape 
saw before them the Arctic Ocean stretching onward 
to the Pole. Here Sir Hugh exhorted his commanders, 
Chancelor and Durf ooth to keep close together. Soon 
after this there arose such " terrible whirlwinds," that 
they were obliged to stand out to the open sea, and 
allow the vessels to drift at the mercy of the waves. 

Amid the thick mists of the next stormy night the 
vessels of Willoughby and Chancelor separated, and 
never again met. Willoughby's pinnace was dashed 
to pieces amid the tempest ; and next morning, when 
light dawned, he could see neither of his companions ; 
but, discovering at length the smaller vessel called the 
Confidence, he continued his voyage. 

He now sailed nearly two hundred miles north-east 
and by north, but was astonished and bewildered at 
not discovering any symptom of land ; whence it ap- 
peared that *' the land lay not as the globe made men- 
tion." Instead of sailing along or towards Norway, he 



42 FATE OF THE EXPLOEERS. 

was plunging deeper and deeper into tlie unknown 
abyss of tlie Northern Ocean. 

At lengtli land appeared, but Mgli, desolate, and 
covered with snow, while no sound was wafted 
over the waves, except the crash of its falling ice and 
the hungiy roar of its monsters. Tliis coast was e\d- 
dently that of Nova Zembla ; but there was no point 
at which a landing could be made. After another at- 
tempt to push to the northward, they turned to the 
south-west, and in a few days saw the coast of Rus- 
sian Lapland. Here they must have been very near 
the opening into the White Sea, into which, had for- 
tune guided their sails, they would have reached 
Archangel, have had a joyful meeting with their com- 
rades, and spent the ^vinter in comfort and security. 
An evil destiny led them westward. 

The coast was naked, uninhabited, and destitute 
of shelter, except at one point, where they found a 
shore bold and rocky, but with one or two good har- 
bors. Hei'e, though it was only the middle of Sep- 
tember, they felt already all the premature rigors of a 
northern season ; intense frost, snow, and ice driving 
through the air, as though it had been the depth of 
winter. The officers conceived it therefore most ex- 
pedient to search no longer along these desolate 
shores, but to take up their quartei^ in this haven till 
the ensuing spring. 

The narrative here closes, and the darkest gloom 
involves the fate of this fii^t English expedition. 
Neither the commander nor any of his brave compan- 
ions ever returned to their native shores. After long 
suspense and anxiety, tidings reached England that 
some Russian sailors, as they wandered along these 
dreary boundaries, had been astonished by the view 



chanoelor's visit to eussia. 43 

of two large ships, whidi they entered, and found the 
gallant crews all lifeless. There was only the journal 
of the voyage, with a note written in Januaiy, show- 
ing that at that date the crews were still alive. What 
was the immediate cause of a catastrophe so dismal 
and so complete, whether the extremity of cold, fam- 
ine, or disease, or whether all these ills united at once 
assailed them, can now only be matter of sad conjec- 
ture. Thomson thus pathetically laments their fate : — 

" Miserable they, 
Who, here entangled in the gathering ice, 
Take their last look of the descending sun, 
While, full of death, and fierce with tenfold frost, 
The long, long night, incumbent, o'er their heads, 
Falls horrible. Such was the Briton's fate. 
As with first prow (what have not Britons dared !) 
He for the passage sought, attempted since 
So much in vain. " 

After parting mth the other two ships Chancelor 
reached the port of Wardhuys and after waiting seven 
days for his companions, pushed fearlessly on toward 
the north-east, and sailed so far that he came at last 
" to a place where they found no night at all." Then 
they reached the entrance of an immense bay (the 
White Sea) and espied a fishing boat, the crew of 
which, having never seen a vessel of similar magnitude, 
were as much astonished as the native Americans had 
been at the Spaniards, and, taking the alarm, fled at 
full speed. Chancelor, with his X3arty, pursued and 
overtook them ; whereupon they fell flat on the ground 
half -dead, crying for mercy. He immediately raised 
them most courteously, and by looks, gestures, and 
gifts, expressed the most kind intentions. Being then 
allowed to depart, they spread everywhere the report 
of the arrival " of a strange nation, of singular gentle- 
ness and courtesy." The natives came in crowds, and 



44 DEATH OF CHANCELOE. 

the sailors were copiously supplied with provisions 
and everything they wanted. 

Chancelor now learned that he was at the extremity 
of a vast country obscurely known as Eussia or Mus- 
covy, ruled by a sovereign named Ivan Vasilovitch, 
and obtained permission to visit him at his court at 
Moscow. The journey was made on sledges, and 
Chancelor returned with a letter from the Czar, grant- 
ing privileges to traders, which led to the formation 
of the Muscovy Company. 

Chancelor went to Russia a second time, in the 
employ of this company ; and on the homeward voyage 
with four ships and an ambassador from the Czar, 
two of the vessels were wrecked on the coast of Nor- 
way ; a thu^d reached the Thames ; but the fourth, in 
which were the chiefs of the expedition, was driven 
ashore on the coast of Scotland, where it went entirely 
to pieces. Chancelor endeavored, in a very dark 
night, to convey himself and the ambassador ashore 
in a boat. The skiff was overwhelmed by the tempest, 
and Chancelor was drowned, though the ambassador 
succeeded in reaching the land. He thence proceeded 
to London, where Philip and Mary gave him a splen- 
did and pompous reception. 

In 1556, a vessel called the Searchthrift, Avas fitted 
out and placed under the command of Stephen Bur- 
roughs, who had gone mth Chancelor on his first 
voyage. Enthusiasm and hope seem to have risen as 
high as at the departure of the first expedition. Se- 
bastian Cabot came down to Gravesend with a large 
party of ladies and gentlemen, and, having first gone 
on board, and partaken of such cheer as the vessel 
afforded, invited Burroughs and his company to a 
splendid banquet at the sign of the Christopher. 



ENGLISH TEAVELEES IN ASIA. 45 

Among tlie islands of Waygatz, the voyagers fell in 
witli a Russian craft, and on giving tlie master there- 
of a present of pewter spoons, lie stated tliat the ad- 
joining country was that of the wild Samoides, who 
were said to eat Russians when opportunity offered. 
At a deserted encampment of these people, Burroughs 
saw three hundred of their idols — human figures of 
horrible aspect. 

After this, Burroughs approached Nova Zembla, but 
as winter was near he concluded that it would be 
useless to attempt further explorations that season, 
and so turned homeward. 

The Muscovy Company now attempted to open 
communication with Persia and India across the Cas- 
pian, and by ascending the Oxus to Bochara. This 
scheme they prosecuted at great cost, and by a series 
of bold adventures, in which Jenkinson, Johnson, Al- 
cocke, and other of their agents, penetrated deep into 
the interior regions of Asia. An unusual degree of 
courage was indeed necessary to undertake this expe- 
dition, which was to be begun by passing round the 
North Cape to the White Sea, then by a land journey 
and voyage down the Volga, across the whole breadth 
of the Russian empire to Astrakhan, before they could 
even embark on the Caspian. It was soon ascertained, 
that no goods could bear the cost of such an immense 
and dangerous conveyance by sea and land. 

This channel of intercourse with the Indies having 
failed, attention was again attracted to the route by 
the north and east of Asia. John Balak, who had 
been living at Duisburg, sent on much information of 
the country^ and of the attempts of a traveler named 
Assenius to penetrate to the eastward. He described 
a river, probably the Yenisei, down which came 



46 



ENGLISH TRAVELERS IN ASIA. 



" great vessels laden with ricli and precious merchan- 
dise, brought by black or swart people." In ascend- 
ing this river, men came to the great lake of Baikal, 
on whose banks were the Kara Kalmucs, who, he as- 
serted, were the very people of Cathay. It was added, 
that on the shores of this lake had been heard sweet 
harmony of bells, and that stately and large buildings 
had been seen therein. 

Reasoning from this new information Gerard Mer- 
cator, the famous geographer and map-maker of those 
days, claimed that a short passage beyond the limit 
already reached by navigators would carry them to 
Japan and China. This was underrating the breadth 
of Asia by a hundred degrees of longitude, or more 
than a fourth of the circumference of the globe. 

To realize these ^dews, two vessels under Arthur 
Pet and Charles Jackson left England in 1580. On 
reaching high latitudes they were surrounded with 
fields of ice. They were also enveloped in fogs, and 
obliged to fasten to icebergs, where, " abiding the 
Lord's leisure, they continued Avith patience." Finally 
they found their way home without making any prog- 
ress at solving the problem. 




m . jt 




CHAPTEB TV, 
DUTCH EXPEDITIONS TO THE NORTH-EAST. 

(WM. BAREIS^TZ COENELIZ ETP.) 

The Englisli attempt to find a North-east passage 
to tlie Indies having all signally failed, the Dutch took 
up the enterprise, and a society of merchants fitted out 
three vessels, which sailed from the Texel on the 5th of 
June, 1594, under the general guidance of William 
Barentz, a noted pilot, and an expert sailor. 

On approaching Nova Zembla two of the ships at- 
tempted to pass by the old route of the Strait of Way- 
gatz; but Barentz himself, taking a bolder course, 
endeavored to pass round to the northward of Nova 
Zembla, which opposed his eastward progress. Pass- 
ing the Black Cape and William's Isle, they saw 
various features characteristic of the Arctic world. At 
the Orange Isles, they came upon three hundred wal- 
rus, lying in heaps upon the sand and basking in the 
sun. Supposing that these animals were helpless on 
shore, the sailors marched against them with pikes 
and hatchets, but, to their surprise, were obliged to 
retire in dishonor. 

The crews had a fierce encounter with a Polar bear. 
Having seen one on the shore, they entered their 
shallop, and discharged several balls at him, but with- 

47 



48 DUTCH AECTIC EXPEDITIONS. 

out inflicting any deadly wound. Tliey were then 
happy wlien they succeeded in throwing a noose about 
his neck, hoping to lead him like a lapdog, and carry 
him as a trophy into Holland. They were not a little 
alarmed by his mighty and tremendous struggles ; but 
what was their consternation, when he fastened his 
paws on the stern and entered the boat ! The whole 
crew expected instant death, either from the sea or 
from his jaws. Providentially at this moment the 
noose got entangled with the iron work of the rudder, 
and the creature struggled in vain to extricate him- 
self. Seeing him thus fixed, they mustered courage to 
advance and despatch him with their spears. 

Barentz, reached the northern extremity of Nova 
Zembla by August 1st ; but the wind blew so strong, 
that he and his crew gave up hope of passing that 
point, and resolved to return. 

The two other vessels meantime pushed on along 
the coast. On turning a point the Dutch observed 
one of those great collections of rudely carved images 
which had been formerly remarked by Burroughs. 
These consisted of men, women, and children, some- 
times having from four to eight heads, all with their 
faces turned eastward, and many horns of reindeer ly- 
ing at their feet ; it was called, therefore, the Cape of 
Idols. 

After passing through the strait of Waygatz, and 
sailing for some space along the coast of Nova Zembla, 
they were repelled by the icy barriers ; but having by 
perseverance rounded these, they arrived at a wide, 
blue, open sea, with the coast bending rapidly south- 
ward ; and though this was only the shore of the Gulf 
of 01)i, they doubted not that it was the eastern 
boundary of Asia, and would afford an easy passage 



SECOND DUTCH VOYAGE. 49 

down upon CMna. Instead, however, of prosecuting 
tMs voyage, they determined to hasten back and com- 
municate to their countrymen this joyful intelligence. 
The two divisions met on the coast of Russian Lapland, 
and arrived in the Texel on the 16th of September. 

The intelligence conveyed in regard to the latter 
part of this expedition kindled the most sanguine 
hopes in the government and people of Holland. Six 
vessels were fitted out, not as for adventure and dis- 
covery, but as for assured success, and for carrying 
on an extensive traffic in the golden regions of the 
East. They were laden with merchandise, and well 
supplied with money ; while a seventh, a light yacht, 
was instructed to follow them till they had passed 
Tabis, the supposed bounding promontory of Asia; 
when, having finally extricated themselves from the 
Polar ices and directed their course to China, it was 
to return to Holland with the joyful tidings. 

The squadron sailed from the Texel, the 2d of June 
1595. Nothing great occurred till the 4th of August 
when they reached the strait between Waygatz and 
the continent, to which they had given the appellation 
of the Strait of ^Nassau. They came to the Cape of 
Idols ; but though these were still drawn up in full 
array, no trace was found of the habitations which 
they might have seemed to indicate. A Russian ves- 
sel, however, constructed of pieces of bark sewed to- 
gether, was met on its way from the Pechora to the 
Obi in search of the teeth of the sea-horse, whale-oil, 
and geese. The sailors accosted the Dutch in a very 
friendly manner, presented eight fat birds, and on 
going on board one of the vessels, were struck with 
astonishment at its magnitude, its equipments, and the 
high order with which everything was arranged. This 



50 DUTCH AECTIC EXPEDITIONS. 

being a fast-day, they refused meat, butter, and cheese ; 
but, on being offered a raw lierring, eagerly swallowed 
it entire, liead and tail inclusive. 

The navigators, after considerable search, fell in 
with a party of Samoiedes, who manifested much 
jealousy of the strangers, and on the approach of 
the interpreter, drew their arrows to shoot him ; but 
he called out, " We are friends "; upon which they 
laid down their weapons, and saluted him in the Rus- 
sian style, by bending their heads to the ground. 

On hearing a gun fired, they ran away and leaped 
like madmen, till assured that no harm was intended. 
A sailor boldly Avent up to the chief, dignified in the 
narrative with the title of king, and presented him 
with some biscuit, which the monarch graciously ac- 
cepted and ate, though looking round somewhat sus- 
piciously. At length the parties took a friendly 
leave; but a native ran after the foreigners with 
signs of great anger, on account of one of their rude 
statues which a sailor had carried off. 

Being informed that a few days' sail would bring 
them to a point beyond which there was a large open 
sea, they made repeated attempts to reach it, but were 
driven back by floating ice, and at the end of Sep- 
tember were forced to return to Holland ivithout 
having accomplished any one of the brilliant exploits 
for which they had set out. 

Another expedition of two vessels, entrusted 
to Barentz and Corneliz Byp, sailed from Amster- 
dam on the 10th of May, 1590. As homesickness 
was suspected to have some relation to the failure of 
former expeditions, none but unmarried persons were 
admittful as members. 

Avoiding the coast of Bussia they pushed north- 



DISOOVEEY OF SPITZBERGEIT. 51 

erly, and on tlie 22d saw the Shetland Islands. On 
the 9th of June they discovered a long island rising 
abruptly into steep and lofty cliif s, and named it Bear 
Island. The horror of this isle to their view must 
have been unspeakable : the prospect dreary ; black 
where not hid with snow, and broken into a thousand 
precipices. No sounds but of the dashing of the 
waves, the crashing collision of floating ice, the dis- 
cordant notes of myriads of sea-fowl, the yelping of 
Arctic foxes, the snorting of the walruses, or the 
roaring of the Polar bears. 

Proceeding onward, they reached the latitude of 80^, 
and discovered the coast of the Spitzbergen Archipel- 
ago, a cluster of islands lying nearer the North Pole 
than any other known land, excepting the regions dis- 
covered by Kane, Playes, and Hall. Notwithstand- 
ing its high latitude, Spitzbergen has been much 
frequented by whaling-ships, walrus hunters and ame- 
teur sportsmen. 

The mariners, finding their progress eastward stop- 
ped by this line of coast, now retraced their route 
along its deep bays, still steering southward till they 
found themselves again at Bear Island. Here Corneliz 
and Barentz separated ; the former proposing to push 
again northward. 

Barentz proceeded south-easterly intending to round 
the northern point of Nova Zembla. On the 6th of 
August, he fastened his vessel to a large iceberg amid 
drifting ice, off Cape Nassau. 

On the 10th, the ice began to separate, and the sea- 
men remarked that the berg to which they were 
moored was fixed to the bottom, and that all the 
others struck against it. Afraid that these loose 
pieces would collect and enclose them, they sailed on, 



52 DUTCH ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. 

mooring themselves to successive fragments, one of 
wMcli rose like a stee]3le, being twenty fathoms 
above and twelve beneath the water. They saw 
around them more than four hundred large icebergs, 
the fear of which made them keep close to the shore, 
not being aware that in that quarter they were 
fonned. 

Steering on they came to Orange Island, which forms 
the northern extremity of Nova Zembla. Here ten 
men swam on shore, and, having mounted several piles 
of ice which rose, as it were, into a little mountain, 
they had the satisfaction of seeing the coast tending 
southward, and a wide open sea to the south-east. 
They hastened back to Barentz with these joyful 
tidings, and the success of the voyage was considered 
almost secure. 

But these hopes were delusive. After doubling 
Cape Desire they were drawn into what they called 
Icy Port, and the vessel was thrown into a position 
almost perpendicular. From this critical attitude they 
were relieved next day ; but fresh masses of ice con- 
tinually increased the terrible ramparts around them. 

The explorers now felt that they must bid adieu 
for this year to all hopes of escape from their icy prison. 
As the vessel was cracking continually, and opening in 
different quarters, they made no doubt of its going to 
pieces, and could hope to sundve the winter only by 
constructing a hut, which might shelter them from 
the approaching rigor of the season. Parties sent 
into the country reported ha^^ng seen footsteps of rein- 
deer, also a river of fresh water, and, what was more 
important still, a great quantity of fine trees, with the 
roots still attached to them, strewed upon the shore, 
all brought down the rivers of Eussia and Tartary. 



impeiso:n-ed for the winter. 53 

These circumstances clieered the mariners; tliey 
trusted tliat Providence, wliicli had in this surprising 
manner furnished materials to build a house, and fuel 
to warm it, would supply also whatever was necessary 
for their passing through the approaching winter, and 
for returning at length to their native country. A 
sledge was instantly constructed; three men cut the 
wood, while ten drew it to the spot marked out for 
the hut. They sought to raise a rampart of earth for 
shelter and security, and employed a long line of fire 
in the hope of softening the ground, but in vain. The 
carpenter having died, it w^as found impossible to dig 
a grave for him, and they lodged his body in a cleft 
of the rock. 

The building of the hut was carried on with ardor, 
yet the cold endured in this operation was intense, 
and almost insupportable. The snow sometimes fell 
so thick, for days successively, that the seamen could 
not stir from under cover. They had at the same 
time hard and perpetual combats with the Polar bear. 
One day three of these furious animals chased the 
working party into the vessel and advanced furiously 
to attack them, but finally retreated. 

Sometime after this a westerly wind cleared away 
the ice and they saw a wide open sea without, while 
the vessel was enclosed within, as it were, by a solid 
wall. By October they completed their hut, and pre- 
pared to convey thither their provisions and stores. 
Some painful discoveries were now made. Several 
tuns of line Dantzic beer, of medicinal quality, from 
which they had anticipated much comfort, had frozen 
so hard as to burst the casks ; the contents remained in 
the form of ice, but when thawed it tasted like bad 

water. 

4 



54 DUTCH ARCTIC EXPEDITION'S. 

The sun began now to ipsij only sliort visits, and to 
give signs of approacliing departure. He rose in tlie 
soutli-soutli-east and set in the soutli-soutli-west, while 
the moon was scarcely dimmed by his presence. On 
the 4th of November the sky was calm and clear, but 
no sun rose or set. 

The dreary winter night of three months, which 
had now set in, was not, however, without some alle- 
viations. The moon, now at the full, wheeled her pale 
but perpetual circle round the horizon. With the sun 
disappeared also the bear, and in his room came the 
Arctic fox, a beautiful little creatui-e, whose flesh re- 
sembled kid, and furnished a variety to their meals. 
They found great difficulty in the measurement of 
time, and on the 6th rose late in the day, when 
a controversy ensued whether it was day or night. 
The cold had stopped the movements of all the clocks, 
but they afterward formed a sand-glass of twelve 
hours, by which they contrived tolerably to estimate 
theii* time. 

On the 3d of December, as the sailors lay in bed, 
they heard from without a noise as tremendous as if 
all the mountains of ice by which they were surround- 
ed had fallen in pieces over each other, and the first 
light which they afterward obtained showed a consider- 
able extent of open sea. 

As the season advanced, the cold became always 
more and more intense. Early in December a dense 
fall of snow stopped up the smoke flues so that notliing 
but a low fire could be kept up. The room was thus 
kept at alow temperature, which was partially remedied 
l)y warming the beds vvith heated stones. Ice two 
inches thick formed on the walls ; and their suffering 
came to such an extremity, that, casting at each other 



ENCOUNTEE WITH A BEAR. 55 

languislimg and piteous looks, tliey anticipated tlie 
extinction of tlie life of tlie whole crew. 

They now resolved that, cost what it might, they 
should for once be thoroughly warmed. They repaired, 
therefore, to the ship, whence they brought an ample 
supply of coal ; and having kindled an immense fire, 
and carefully stopped up the windows and every 
aperture by which the cold could penetrate, they did 
bring themselves into a most comfortable temperature. 
In this delicious state, to which they had been so long 
strangers, they went to rest, and talked gayly for some 
time before falling asleep. Suddenly, in the middle 
of the night, several awakened in a state of the most 
painful vertigo ; their cries roused the rest and all 
found themselves, more or less, in the same alarming 
predicament. On attempting to rise, they became 
dizzy, and could neither stand nor walk. At length 
two or three contrived to stagger towards the door ; 
but the first who opened it fell down insensible among 
the snow, but the wintry air, which had been their 
greatest dread, now restored life to the whole party. 

In the midst of these sufferings, remembering that 
the 5th of January was the feast of the Kings, they 
besought the master that they might be allowed to 
celebrate that great Dutch festival. They had saved 
a little wine and two pounds of flour, with which they 
fried pancakes in oil ; the tickets were drawn, the gun- 
ner was crowned king of Kova Zembla, and the eve- 
ning passed as merrily as if they had been at home 
round their native fireside. 

About the middle of January the crews began to 
experience some abatement of that deep darkness in 
which they had so long been involved, and affairs 
assumed a more cheerful aspect. Instead of constant- 



56 DUTCn ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. 

ly moping in tlie liut, the men went out daily, em- 
ployed themselves in walking, running, and athletic 
games, wliicli warmed their bodies and preserved 
their health. With the sun, however, appeared their 
old enemy, the bear. One attacked them amid so 
thick a mist that they could not see to point their 
pieces, and sought shelter in the hut. The bear came 
to the door, and made the most desperate attempts to 
burst it oj)en ; but the master kept his back fiiTnly 
set against it, and the animal at last retreated. Soon 
after he mounted the roof, where, having in vain at- 
tempted to enter by the chimney, he made furious 
attempts to pull it down, ha\^ng torn the sail in 
which it was wrapped ; all the while his frightful and 
hungry roarings spread dismay through the mansion 
beneath; at length he retreated. Another came so 
close to the man on guard, who w^as looking another 
way, that, on receiving the alarm from those within 
and looking about, he saw himself almost in the jaws 
of the bear; however, he had the presence of mind 
instantly to iire, when the animal was struck in the 
head, retreated, and was afterward pursued and de- 
sjDatched. 

In February, a heavy north-east gale brought a cold 
more intense than ever, and buried the hut again 
under snow. Tliis was the more deeply felt, as the 
men's strength and supply of generous food to recruit 
it were alike on the decline. They no longer at- 
tempted daily to clear a road, but those who were 
able went out and in by the chimney. A dreadful 
calamity then overtook tliem in the failure of their 
stock of wood for fuel. Tliey began to gather all the 
fragments which had been thrown away, or lay scat- 
tered about the hut ; but these being soon exhausted, 



THE SHIP DESEETED. 57 

it behooved them to carry out tlieir sledge in search, 
of more. To dig the trees, however, out of the deep 
snow, and drag them to the hut, was a task which, in 
their present exhausted state, would have appeared 
impossible, had they not felt that they must do it or 
perish. 

In the course of March and April, the weather be- 
came milder, yet the barriers which enclosed the ship 
continued, and, to their inexpressible grief, rapidly in- 
creased. In the middle of March these ramparts were 
only 75 paces broad, in the beginning of May they 
were 500. These piles of ice resembled the houses of 
a great city, interspersed with apparent towers, steeples, 
and chimneys. The sailors, viewing with desjoair this 
position of the vessel, earnestly entreated permission 
to fit out the two boats, and in them to undertake the 
voyage homeward. The mere digging of the boats 
from under the snow was a most laborious task, and 
the equipment of them would have been next to im- 
possible, but for the enthusiasm with which it was un- 
dertaken. 

By the 1 1th of June they had the boats fitted out 
their clothes packed, and the provisions embarked. 
Then, however, they had to cut a way through the 
steeps and walls of ice which intervened between them 
and the open sea. Amid the extreme fatigue of dig- 
ging, breaking, and cutting, they were kept in play 
by a huge bear which had come over the frozen sea 
from Tartary. 

At length the crew, having embarked all their 
clothes and provisions, set sail on the 14th Avith a 
westerly breeze. In the three following days they 
passed the Cape of Isles, Cape Desire, and came to 
Orange Isle, always working their way through much 



58 DUTCH APwCTIC EXPEDITIONS. 

encumbering ice. As the}' were off Icy Cape, Bar- 
entz, wlio liad "been long struggling witli severe ill- 
ness, desired to be lifted up that he might take a last 
view of that fatal and terrible boundary, and he gazed 
upon it for a considerable time. 

On the following day the boats were again involved 
amid masses of drift-ice ; but one of the men boldly 
took a rope to a solid floe, and by this means all the 
crew, then the stores, and finally the boat itself, reach- 
ed a secure position. During this detention Barentz 
died, to the great grief of all his crew. 

On the 2 2d there appeared open sea at a little dis- 
tance, and having dragged the boats over successive 
pieces of ice, they were again afloat. In the three fol- 
lowing days they reached Cape Nassau, the ice fre- 
quently stopping them, but opening again like the 
gates of a sluice, and allowing a passage. On the 26tli 
they were obliged once more to disembark and pitch 
their tents on the frozen surface. 

On the Tth of July they again dragged the boats to 
an open sea, and from this date their progress though 
often obstructed was never stopped. On the 28th 
they approached the southern part of Nova Zembla 
where they found two Russian vessels at anchor, and 
were received by their crews with much courtesy. 

After mutual presents, the parties set out to sail 
together to Waygatz, but were separated by a gale. 
On the 4th of August the Dutch came in view of the 
coast of Russia, and after a tedious voyage along the 
shore reached Kola, where they found Corneliz, who 
conveyed them to Amsterdam. Corneliz had not been 
successful in making any discovery of importance. 




VOTIVE CROSS AND MIDNIGHT SUN-NOETHEKN RUSSIA. 



CHAPTER Y. 

AECTIC VOYAGES OF MARTIN FROBISHER 
AND JOHN DAYIS. 

Ik the early reign of Queen Elizabeth, tlie great 
enterprise of finding a North-western passage was 
again revived in England. Since the discoveries of 
Cabot no progress had been made at solving the 
problem, although two English expeditions had sailed 
to Northern America. 

The first one consisted of two ships, having on 
board " divers cunning men," one of whom was a canon 
of St. Paul's, a great mathematician, and wealthy. 
The ships reached Newfoundland, where one of them 
was wrecked ; the other vessel sailed southw^ard, and 
then returned to England. 

Nine years afterwards, another voyage was made in 
the same direction by a company of adventurers of 
highest respectability. This gay band mustered in 
military array at Gravesend, and having taken the 
sacrament, went on board ship. They had a long and 
tedious voyage, during which their buoyant spirits 
considerably flagged. Having reached Newfoundland, 
they saw a boat with the " natural people of the 
country." A barge was fitted out to treat with them ; 
but the savages, alarmed, fled precipitately, relinquish- 
ing the side of a bear which they had been roasting. 

59 



60 EI^GLISH ADYJblJ^TUEERS. 

The coast was barren and desolate, and a famine 
soon rose to sucli a pitcli as to drive them to tlie 
extremity of cannibalism. Tliey liad arranged tlie 
casting of lots to decide wliose life should be sacrificed 
to save the rest, when a French ship appeared in view. 
Finding it to be both in good order and well stored 
with provisions, the English scrupled not to attack 
and seize it ; and in it they made their way to Eng- 
land in a most miserable condition, leaving their own 
bark to the ejected crew. 

Soon afterwards the Frenchmen reached France, 
and raised such a clamor about the outrage of the 
Englishmen, that King Henry liberally paid for their 
losses fi-om his own j^^i'se. 

The next English expedition to the ]S"ortli-west was 
planned and conducted by Martin Frobisher, a native 
of Yorkshire, who subsequently distinguished him- 
self by naval exploits in every quarter of the globe. 
Frobisher regarded the discovery of a North-west 
passage " as the only thing of the world, yet left un- 
done, whereby a notable man might become famous ;" 
and for fifteen years in city and court he solicited the 
means for undertaking the enter2:)rise. 

With three small vessels (35, 30, and 10 tons,) 
Frobisher, on the 8tli of June 157G, passed Greenwich 
where tlie court then resided, and when opposite the 
pahice fired a salute in honor of the queen, who gazed 
at the fleet from the Avindow and waved her hand to 
the departing explorers. 

Early in July, Frobisher saw a range of a^vful and 
precipitous summits, which, even in the height of sum- 
mer, were white with snoAv ; this was the southern 
point of Greenland. He then steered westward, and 
exjjerienced a severe gale, during which his smallest 



DISCOVERY OF " META I]!^COGNITA. 61 

vessel sunk beneatli the waves witli all on board. 
Appalled at this disaster one of tlie remaining vessels 
turned back, but Frobisher in the third one pushed 
forward, and on the22d of July reached the ice-bound 
coasts of Labrador. Sailing northward he came in 
August to more accessible land, and named it '^ Meta 
Incognita." 

Seeing seven boats plying along the beach, Frobisher 
sent out one of his own, the crew of which, by holding 
up a white cloth, induced a native canoe to approach ; 
but on seeing the ship the people immediately turned 
back. Frobisher then went on shore, and, by the dis- 
tribution of presents, enticed one of the natives on 
board. This person, being well treated with food and 
drink, made on his return so favorable a report, that 
nineteen followed his example. 

The natives were next day more shy, and with 
some difficulty one of them, by the allurements of a 
bell, was drawn on board. Frobisher, having no in- 
tention to detain him, sent a boat with 'Rve men to 
put him on shore ; but, urged by curiosity, they went 
on to join the main body of the natives, and were 
never allowed to return. After sj)ending two days 
firing guns, and looking for the missing men, Fro- 
bisher sailed for home, where he arrived in October. 

Although Frobisher had made but little progress 
towards a western passage, his voyage was considered 
highly creditable, and interest in the new country 
was greatly excited from the fact that a large shining 
stone, which Frobisher had brought home and divid- 
ed among his friends, was pronounced by the gold- 
smiths to be gold ore. A new expedition of three 
ships was immediately organized ; England was thrown 
into a ferment of joy ; and Frobisher being invited 



62 frobisiiek's second voyage. 

to visit tlie queen, received lier hand to kiss, with 
many gracious expressions. 

The new expedition sailed on the 26th of May, 
1577 ; on the 8th of June it touched at the Orkneys 
for fresh water. The poor inhabitants, having, it is 
probable, suffered from the inroads of pirates, fled 
from their houses mth cries and shrieks, but were 
soon, by courteous treatment, induced to return. 

The English now entered on their perilous voyage 
through the northern ocean, during which they were 
much cheered with the perpetual light. At length 
they touched at the sound or deep indentation 
of waters known as Frobisher Strait — aftei'wards 
said to be a sound, and recently proved such 
by the researches of the late Captain Hall. The 
coast, however, was found guarded by a mighty wall 
of ice, which the ships could not penetrate ; but the 
captain, with two of his boats, worked his way into 
the sound, and began to survey the country. 

So crude were then the ideas respecting the 
geography of these regions, that they imagined the 
coast on their left to be America, and that on their 
right Asia. Landing on the American side they 
scrambled to the top of a hill, and erected a column, 
which, after the great patron of the expedition, was 
called Mount Warwick. On their return, cries were 
heard like the lowing of bulls, and a large body of 
natives ran up to them in a very gay and cordial 
manner. They began an eager traffic for the trifling 
ornaments displayed by their visitors, yet declined 
every invitation to go on board, while the English on 
their part did not choose to accede to their overtures 
of going into the countr}^ Frobisher and a compan- 
,ion, meeting two of the natives apart, rashly seized 



TIGHT WITH ESQUIMAUX. 63 

and began dragging tliem to the boats, hoping 
to gain their friendship by presents and courtesy. 

On the slippery ground, however, their feet gave way, 
the Esquimaux broke loose, and found behind a rock 
their bows and arrows, which they began to discharge 
with great fury. Frobisher and his comrade, seized 
with a panic, fled full speed, and the former reached 
the boat with an arrow sticking in his leg. The crew, 
imagining that something truly serious must have 
driven back their commander in such discomfiture, 
gave the alarm, and ran to the rescue. The two bar- 
barians instantly fled ; but one of them was caught 
and taken to the boat. 

Meantime the ships outside were involved in a 
dreadful tempest, being tossed amid those tremendous 
ice-islands, the least of which would have been suffi- 
cient to have crushed them into a thousand pieces. 
To avoid dangers which so closely beset them, they 
were obliged to tack fourteen times in four hours ; 
but with the benefit of the perpetual light, the skill 
of their steersman, and the aid of Providence, they 
weathered the tempest, without the necessity of driv- 
ing out to sea and abandoning the boats. On the 
19th, Frobisher came out to the ship with a large 
store of glittering stone ; upon which, says one of the 
adventurers, "we were all rapt with joy, forgetting 
both where we were and what we had suifered. Be- 
hold," he continues, " the glory of man, — to-night 
looking for death, to-morrow devising how to satisfy 
his greedy appetite with gold." 

A north west gale now sprang up; before which, 
like magic, the mighty barriers of ice by which the 
ships had been shut out melted away. They had now 
a broad and open passage by which they entered the 



64 EELICS OF THE LOST SAJXOES. 

sound, wliicli was a strait leading into the Pacific 
Ocean. In a run of upwards of thirty leagues they 
landed at different points, and, mounting to the tops 
of hills, took possession of the country with solemn 
and sacred ceremonies, in name of her majesty. 

On questioning their prisoner, he admitted knowl- 
edge respecting the ^ve men captured in the preceding 
year, but repelled most strenuously the signs by wliich 
the English intimated their belief that they had been 
killed and eaten. However, a dark source of suspicion 
was soon opened ; for some boats of the natives were 
found, which, along with bones of dogs, flesh of un- 
known animals, and other strange things, contained 
an English canvas doublet, a shirt, a girdle, three 
shoes for contrary feet, — apparel which, beyond all 
doubt, belonged to their countrymen lost in the j^re- 
ceding year. 

Hoping to recover them, they left a letter in the 
boat, with pen, ink, and paper, and a party of forty, 
under Charles Jackman, marched inland to take the 
natives in the rear, and drive them upon the coast^ 
where Frobisher with his' boats waited to intercept 
them. The wretches had removed their tents into 
the interior; but the invaders, after marching over 
several mountains, descried a cluster of huts, whose 
inmates hastened to their canoes, and pushed out full 
speed to sea. They rowed with a rapidity which 
would have baffled all pursuit, liad not Frobisher 
with his boats held the entrance of the sound and 
there awaited them. 

As soon as the Esquimaux saw themselves thus 
beset, they landed among the rocks, abandoning their 
skiffs. The English ruslied on to the assault; but 
the natives, stationed on the rocks, resisted the land- 



FEMALE PRISONERS. 65 

ing, and stood tlieir ground witli tlie most savage and 
desperate valor. Overwlielmed with clouds of ar- 
rows, tliey picked them up, plucking them even out 
of their bodies, and returned them with fury. On 
feeling themselves mortally wounded, they plunged 
from the rocks into the sea, lest they should fall into 
the hands of the conquerors. 

At length, completely worsted, and having lost five 
or six of their number, they sprang up among the 
cliffs and eluded pursuit. There fell into the hands 
of the assailants only two females, who caused some 
speculation. One was stricken in years, and present- 
ed a visage so singularly hideous, that her moccasins 
were pulled off to ascertain if she was not the great 
enemy of mankind in disguise. The other female 
was young, with a child in her arms ; and being, from 
her peculiar costume, mistaken for a man, had been 
fired at and the child wounded. It was in vain to 
apply remedies ; she licked off with her tongue the 
dressings and salves, and cured it in her own way. 
She and the male captive formerly taken appeared to 
be strangers, but on becoming intimate found much 
comfort in each other's society, and showed a strong 
mutual attachment. 

Frobisher still cherished hopes of recovering his 
men. A large party appearing on the top of a hill, 
signs were made of a desire for a friendly interview. 
A few of them advanced, and were introduced to the 
captives. The parties were deeply affected, and spent 
some time without uttering a word ; tears then flowed ; 
and when they at last found sj)eech, it was in tones 
of tenderness and regret, which prepossessed the 
English much in their favor. Frobisher novf came 
forward, and propounded that on condition of restor- 



66 TREACHERY OF THE NATR'ES. 

ing his five men, tliey should receive back their own 
captives, with the addition of sundry of those little 
gifts and presents on which they set the highest value. 
This they promised, and also to convey a letter to the 
prisoners, who doubtless at this time were not alive. 

Afterward three men appeared holding up flags of 
bladder, inviting the invaders to approach ; but the 
latter, who saw the heads of others peeping from be- 
hind the rocks, resolved to proceed A^dth the utmost 
caution. The natives began by placing in view large 
pieces of excellent meat ; and when their enemy could 
not be caught by that bait, a man advanced very close, 
feigning lameness, and seeming to offer himself an 
easy prey. Frobisher allowed a shot to be fired, by 
which the person was cured at once, and took to his 
heels. Seeing all their artifices fail, the barbarians 
determined upon main force, and pouring down to 
the number of a hundred, discharged their arrows 
with great rapidity. They even followed a consider- 
able way along the coast, regardless of the English, 
shot ; but the boats Avere too distant from the shore 
to suffer the slightest annoyance. Several of the sea- 
men impoi-tuned Frobisher to allow them to land and 
attack; but this he refused, as only calculated to 
divert them from the main object, and to cause useless 
bloodshed. 

The 21st of August had now arrived, the ice was 
beginning to form around the ships, and, though little 
progress had been made towards China, the seamen 
had put on board two hundred tons of the precious 
ore. Tliey therefore mounted the highest hill, fired a 
volley in honor of the Countess of Warwick, and 
made their way home. 

Notmthstanding the vicissitudes which had marked 



EROBISIIEk's TIIIED EXPEDITI0]N\ 67 

ttis voyage, its arrival was hailed witli tlie utmost 
exultation. Entliusiasm and liope, both with the 
queen and the nation, rose higher than ever. The 
delusion of the golden ore continued in full force, and 
caused those desolate shores to be regarded as another 
Peru. Special commissioners, men of judgment, art, 
and skill, were named by her majesty to ascertain 
both the quality of the ore and the prospects of the 
voyage to India. After due inquiry, a most favorable 
report was made on both subjects, and it was recom- 
mended not only that a new expedition on a great 
scale should be fitted out, but a colony established on 
that remote coast, who might at once be placed in full 
possession of its treasures, and be on the watch for 
every opportunity of farther discovery. 

To brave the winter of the Polar world was a novel 
and daring enterprise ; yet such was then the national 
spirit, that the appointed number of a hundred was 
quickly filled up. There were forty mariners, thirty 
miners, and thirty soldiers, in which last number were 
oddly included, not only gentlemen, but gold-finers, 
bakers, and carpenters. Materials were sent on board 
the vessels, which, on being put together, might be 
converted into a fort or house. The squadron fitted 
out was the largest that had yet adventured to plough 
the northern deep. It consisted of fiifteen vessels, 
furnished by various ports, especially by those of the 
west, and the rendezvous took place at Harwich on 
the 27th May, 1578, whence they sailed on the 31st. 
The captains waited on the queen at Greenwich, and 
were personally addressed by her in the most gracious 
manner ; Frobisher receiving a chain of gold, and the 
honor of kissing her majesty's hand. 

It is notorious that expeditions got up on the great- 



68 THE FLEET IN" A STOEM. 

est scale, and witli tlie most ample means, usually 
prove tlie most unfortunate. On reacliing the open, 
ing of Frobislier's Strait, tlie navigators found it 
frozen over from side to side, and barred, as it were, 
with, successive walls, mountains, and bulwarks. A 
strong easterly wind had driven numerous icebergs 
upon the coast, and hence the navigation amid these 
huge moving bodies soon became most perilous. The 
Dennis, a large vessel, on board of which was part of 
the projected house, received such a tremendous blow 
from a mountain of ice, that it went down instantly, 
though the other ships, hastening to its aid, succeeded 
in saving the men. This spectacle struck panic into 
the other crews, who felt that the same fate might 
next moment be their own. 

The danger was much augmented when the gale 
increased to a tempest, and the icy masses, tossing in 
every direction, struck the vessels furiously. In- 
vention was now variously at work to find means 
of safety. Some moored themselves to these floating 
islands, and being carried about along with them, 
escaped the outrageous blows which they must other- 
wise have encountered. Others held suspended by 
the sides of the ship oars, j)lanks, pikes, poles, every- 
thing by which the violence of the shocks might be 
broken ; yet the ice, " aided by the surging of the sea 
and billow," was seen to break in pieces planks three 
inches thick. Frobisher considers it as redounding 
highly to the glory of his poor miners and landsmen, 
wholly unused to such a scene, that they faced with 
heroism the assembled dangers that besieged them 
round. " At length, it pleased God with his eyes of 
mercy to look down from heaven," — a brisk south- 
west wind dispersed the ice, and gave them an open 
sea through which to navigate. 



THE EXPEDITION ASTEAY. 69 

After a few days spent in repairing the vessels, and 
stopping up the leaks, Frobisher bent afresh all his 
efforts to penetrate inward to the spot where he was 
to found his colony. After considerable effort, he 
made his way into a strait, when he discovered that 
he was sailing between two coasts; but amid the 
gloomy mists, and the thick snow which fell in this 
northern midsummer, nothing could be distinctly 
seen. As, however, clear intervals occasionally oc- 
curred, affording partial glimpses of the land, the 
surmise arose that this was not the shore along which 
they had formerly sailed. Frobisher would not listen 
to a suggestion which would have convicted him of 
having thrown away much of his time and labor. 
He still pressed onward. Once the mariners imagined 
they saw Mount Warwick, but were soon undeceived. 
At length, the chief pilot stood up and declared, in 
hearing of all the crew, that he never saw this coast 
before. 

Frobisher still persevered, sailing along a country 
more populous, more verdant, and better stocked with 
birds, than the one formerly visited. In fact, this 
was probably the main entrance into Hudson's Bay, 
by continuing in which he would have made the most 
important discoveries. But all his ideas of mineral 
wealth and successful passage were associated with 
the old strait ; and, on being obliged to own that this 
was a different one, he turned back to the open sea. 
In this retreat the fleet was so involved in fogs and 
violent currents, and so beset with rocks and islands, 
that the sailors considered it only by a special inter- 
position of Providence that they were brought out in 
safety. 

When they had reached the open sea, and arrived 
5 - 



70 THE COLONY PEOJECT ABANDONED. 

at the mouth of the desired strait, it was almost as 
difficult to find an entrance. However, Frobisher 
was constantly on the watch, and wherever there 
appeared any opening, it is said " he got in at one gap 
and out at another," till at length he reached his pur- 
posed haven. Before, however, the crews were com. 
pletely landed and established, the 9th of August 
had come, thick snows were falling, and it behooved 
them to hold a solemn consultation as to the pros- 
pects of the projected colony. There remained of 
the house only the materials of the south and east 
sides, a great part of the bread had been spoiled, and 
there was no adequate provision for a hundred men 
during a whole year. 

Kenouncing the idea of settlement, Frobisher still 
asked his captains whether they might not, during 
the short remaining interval, attempt some discovery 
to throw a redeeming lustre on this luckless voyage; 
but, in reply, they urged the advanced season, the 
syniptoms of winter already approaching, and the 
danger of being enclosed in these narrow mlets, 
where they would be in the most imminent danger of 
perishing ;— in short, that nothing was now to be 
thouglit of but a speedy return homeward. This 
was effected, not without the dispersion of the fleet, 
and considerable damage to some of the vessels. 

The failure of successive attempts, and especially 
of one g(jt up with so much cost, produced its natu- 
ral effect in England. The glittering stone, which 
was to have converted this northern Meta into anoth- 
er Peru, was never more heard of ; a few careful 
assays having established its utter insignificance. 
Frobisher strongly advocated another voyage to the 
North-west, but without success, and was obliged to 



SUBSEQUENT LIFE OF FEOBISHEE. 71 

seek in other climates employment for Ms daring and 
active spirit. He accompanied Sir Francis Drake to 
the West Indies, and commanded one of the largest 
ships in the armament which opposed the Spanish 
armada, fighting with such bravery, that he was 
decorated with the honors of knighthood. Being 
afterward sent to assist Henry IV. against the League, 
and employed in the attack of a small fort on the 
coast of France, he received a wound which proved 
fatal in November, 1594. 

The '^ Meta Incognita " or " unknown land " discov- 
ered by Frobisher, lies between Hudson's Strait and 
Frobisher's Strait. Capt. Hall passed the period of 
his first visit to the north in this vicinity, and found 
many relics, as he supposes, of the Frobisher expedi- 
tion. 

Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a man of high character 
both as a soldier and civilian, had been much inter- 
ested in the voyages of his countrymen, and in 1578 
he obtained from Elizabeth a patent conferring sole 
Jurisdiction over a large territory in America, on con- 
dition that he should plant a colony there within six 
years. His half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh was also 
engaged in the enterprise. 

In 1583, Sir Humphrey set out with a fleet of ^ve 
vessels, but one of them put back on account of sick- 
ness. On reaching St. John's harbor, 'New Found- 
land, Sir Humphrey summoned some Spanish and 
Portuguese fishermen there, to witness the ceremony 
of taking possession in the name of the English sov- 
ereign, an operation which he performed by digging 
a turf, and setting up a pillar to which the arms of 
England were afi&xed. Silver ore, as they supposed, 
was discovered and taken on board the vessels, one 



72 LOSS OF THE " SQUIRREL." 

of which was abandoned, while with the remainder 
Sir Humphrey pursued his voyage along the coast 
towards the south. On his way, the largest remain- 
ing ship with its ore was \vrecked, and a hundred 
souls perished. 

Return was now considered necessary, and in the 
midst of terrible storms and tempests, the prows 
were turned homeward. Sir Humphrey had chosen 
to sail in a little tender, called the Squirrel, and when 
the storm came on he was urc^ed to shift his flas: to 
a larger vessel. But he refused to do so, saying : 

" I will not desert my little company, with whom 
I have passed so many storms and perils." 

The gale increased ; lights were burned at night, 
and the little Squirrel, for a long time, was seen gal- 
lantly contending with the waves. Once she came 
so near another ship that its officers could see Sir 
Humphrey sitting by the mainmast, with a book in 
his hand, reading. He looked up, and cried cheerily, 
"We are as near to Heaven by sea as by land.*" 
About midnight, all at once, the lights were extin- 
guished ; and in the morning nothing was seen of the 
good Sir Humphrey or his little ship. 

In 1585 the spirit of discovery was again roused. 
Merchants of London fitted out two vessels, the Sun- 
shine and Moonshine, which were placed under the 
command of John Davis, a determined seaman, en- 
dowed with much courtesy and good humor, by which 
he was likely to render himself acceptable to the rude 
natives of those inhospitable shores : to promote 
which laudable purpose, he was provided not only 
with a supply of the trifling gifts suited to their taste, 
but with a band of music to cheer and recreate their 
spirits. 




LAND or DESOLATION. 




mBlGHTED ICEBERG. 



THE "land of desolatioit." 75 

Davis sailed on tlie 7tli of June, 1585. On fhe 19tli 
of July, as tlie seamen approacliecl tlie Arctic boundary, 
they heard, amid a calm sea beset witli thick mist, a 
mighty roaring, as of the waves dashing on a rocky 
shore. The captain and master pushed off in the 
boat to examine this supposed beach, but were much 
surprised to find themselves involved amid numerous 
icebergs, while all this noise had been caused by the 
rolling and beating of these masses against each other. 

Next day they came in view of Greenland, which 
appeared the most dreary and desolate ever seen ; 
" deformed, rocky, and mountainous, like a sugar-loaf, 
standing to our sight above the clouds. It towered 
above the fog like a white list in the sky, the tops 
altogether covered with snow, the shore beset with 
ice, making such irksome noise that it was called the 
Land of Desolation^ 

After sailing for several days along this dreary 
shore, Davis pushed out north-westward into the open 
sea, hoping in " Grod's mercy to find our desired pas- 
sage." On the 29th he came in view of a land in 64^ 
north latitude, which was still only Greenland ; but 
as the wind was unfavorable for proceeding westward, 
the air temperate, and the coast free from ice, he re- 
solved to go on shore and take a view of the country 
and people. In the company of two others, he landed 
on an island, leaving directions for the rest to follow 
as soon as they should hear any loud signal. The 
party mounted the top of a rock, whence they were 
espied by the natives, who raised a lamentable noise, 
with loud outcries like the howling of wolves. Davis 
and his comrades hereupon struck up a high note, so 
modulated, that it might at once be alluring to the 
natives, and might summon his own crew to deeds 



76 A GREENLAND DANCE. 

either of courtesy or valor. Burton, tlie master, and 
others, hastened, well armed, yet with the band of 
music playing, and dancing to it with the most invit- 
ing signs of friendship. 

In accordance with this gay summons, ten canoes 
hastened from the other islands, and the people 
crowded round the strangers, uttering in a hollow 
voice unintelligible sounds. The English continued 
their friendly salutations, while the other party still 
showed jealousy, till at length one of them began 
pointing towards the sun and beating his breast. 
These signs being returned by John Ellis, master of 
the Moonshine, the natives were induced to approach ; 
and being presented with caps, stockings, gloves, etc., 
and continuing to be hailed with music and dancing, 
their fears gave place to the most cordial amity. 

Next day there appeared thirty-seven canoes, the 
people from which kindly invited the English on 
shore, showing eager impatience at their delay. Da- 
vis manned his boats and went to them ; one of them 
shook hands with him, and kissed his hand, and the 
two parties became extremely familiar. The natives 
parted with every thing, the clothes from oif their 
backs, their buskins of well-dressed leather, their 
darts, oars, and five canoes, accepting cheerfully in 
return whatever their new visitors chose to present. 

Davis next steered directly across the strait, or 
rather sea, which still bears his own name. On the 6th 
of August he discovered high land, which he named 
Mount Raleigh, being part of Cumberland Island. 
Here, anchoring in a fine road, the seamen saw three 
white animals, which seemed to be goats. Desirous 
of fresh victuals and sport, they pursued them, but 
discovered instead three monstrous white bears. 



VOYAGE WITH THE MEEMAID. 77 

Davis, after coasting about for some days, again 
found himself at tlie cape wliicli he had at first reach- 
ed on his crossing from the opposite shore of Green- 
land. This promontory, which he called God's Mercy, 
he now turned, when he found himself in a sound 
stretching north-westward, twenty or thirty leagues 
broad. After ascending it sixty leagues, he found an 
island in the mid-channel. About the end of August, 
however, being involved in fogs and contrary winds, 
he determined to suspend operations for the season 
and return to England. 

On one of the islands in this sound the seamen 
heard dogs howling, and saw twenty approach, of 
wolf -like appearance, but in most peaceful guise. Im- 
pressed, however, with the idea that only animals of 
prey could be found on these shores, they fired and 
killed two, round one of whose necks they found a 
collar, and soon after discovered the sledge to which 
he had been yoked. 

Davis sailed on a second expedition on the 7th of 
May 1586 with his two former vessels, and another 
one called the Mermaid. On the 29th of June he 
reached the scene of his former visit in Greenland. 
The natives came out in their canoes at first mth 
shouts and cries; but, recognizing their companions 
of the former year, they hastened forward, and hung 
round the vessel mth every expression of joy and 
welcome. 

Davis, seeing them in such favorable disposi- 
tions, went ashore and distributed presents. The 
most intimate acquaintance was now begun ; yet 
they never met the strangers anew without crying, 
^'lUaoutP'' beating their breasts and lifting their 
hands to the sun, by which a fresh treaty was ratified. 



78 ESQUIMAUX INCANTATIONS. 

The two parties amused themselves by contests in 
bodily exercises. The Esquimaux could not match 
their opponents in leaping ; but in wrestling tliey 
showed themselves strong and skillful, and threw 
some of the best English wrestlers. By degrees they 
began to manifest less laudable qualities. Tliey exer- 
cised many and solemn incantations, though, Davis 
thanks God, without any effect. They kindled a fire 
by rubbing two sticks against each other, and invited 
him to pass through it ; but he, in contempt of their 
sorcery, caused the fire to be trodden out and the 
embers thrown into the sea. 

The natives, however, soon began to show less 
amiable traits, and finally reached the highest pitch of 
audacity. They stole a spear, a gun, a sword, cut the 
cables and even the Moonshine's boat from her stern. 
The leading personages of the crew remonstrated with 
Davis, that for their security he must " dissolve this 
new fnendship, and leave the company of the thiev- 
ish miscreants." Davis fired two pieces over their 
heads, which "did sore amaze them," and they fled 
precipitately ; but in ten hours they again appeared 
with many promises and presents of skins ; when, on 
seeing iron, " they could in nowise forbear stealing." 
The commander was ac^ain besiec:ed with the com- 
plaints of his crew ; however, " it only ministered to 
him an occasion of laughter," and he told his men to 
look out for their goods, and not to deal hardly with 
the natives, who could scarcely be expected in so 
short a time '' to kno^v tlieir evils." 

Davis now undertook an expedition into the inte- 
rior, lie sailed up what appeared a broad river, but 
which proved only a strait or creek. A violent gust 
of wind having obliged him to seek the shelter of 



AN EXPEDITION TO THE INTERIOK. 79 

land, lie attempted to ascend a very lofty peak ; but 
"tlie mountains were so many and so mighty, tliat 
his purpose prevailed not." While the men were 
gathering muscles for supper, he was amused by view- 
ing for the first time in his life, a water-spout, which 
he describes as a mighty whirlwind taking up the 
water and whirling it round for three hours without 
intermission. 

During the captain's absence matters had become 
worse with the Esquimaux ; they had stolen an an- 
chor, cut the cable, and even thrown stones of half a 
pound weight against the Moonshine. Davis invited 
a party of them on board, made them various little 
presents, taught them to run to the topmast, and dis- 
missed them apparently quite pleased. Yet no sooner 
had the sun set than they began to " practise their 
devilish nature," and threw stones into the Moonshine, 
one of which knocked down the boatswain. The 
captain's meek spirit was at length kindled to wrath, 
and he gave full warrant for two boats to chase the 
culprits ; but they rowed so swiftly that the pursuers 
returned with small content. 

Two days after, ^ve natives presented themselves 
with overtures for a fresh truce ; but the master came 
to Davis, remonstrating that one of them was "the 
chief ringleader, a master of mischief," and vras vehe- 
ment not to let him go. He was made captive, and, 
a fair wind suddenly springing up, the English set 
sail, and carried him away, many doleful signs being 
then exchanged between him and one of his country- 
men ; however, on being well treated, and presented 
with a new suit of frieze, his spirits revived, he be- 
came a pleasant companion, and used occasionally to 
assist the sailors. 



80 DAVIS WARNED BY HIS SAILORS. 

On the I7tli of July the mariners descried a land 
diversified with hills, bays, and capes, and extending 
farther than the eye could reach ; but what was their 
horror on approaching, to find that it was only " a 
most mighty and strange quantity of ice !" It was, 
in fact, that great barrier known as the Middle Pack 

As they coasted along this mighty field, a fog came 
on, by which the ropes, shrouds, and sails were all 
fast frozen, — a phenomena which, on the 24th of July, 
appeared more than strange. Dismayed by these ob- 
servations, the seamen considered the passage hope- 
less, and, in a respectful yet firm tone, warned Davis, 
that by "his over-boldness he might cause their 
widows and fatherless children to give him bitter 
curses." 

Davis was willing to consider their case; yet, 
anxious not to abandon so great an enterprise, he de- 
termined to leave behind him the Mermaid, and to 
push on in the Moonshine with the boldest part of his 
crew. Having found a favorable breeze, he at last, 
on the 1st of August, turned the ice, and in lat. 66°, 
33' reached land ; along which he now coasted south- 
ward for about ten degrees, entangled among a num- 
ber of islands, and missing, in his progress, the inlets 
to Hudson's Bay. On the coast of Labrador, ^ve 
men who landed were beset by the natives, and two 
of them killed and two wounded. Davis then re- 
turned to England. 

Through the influence of his friend Mr. Sanderson, 
Davis sailed on a third expedition with the Sunshine, 
the Elizabeth, and a pinnace, and on the 16th of June, 
1587, arrived among his old friends on the coast of 
Greenland. The natives received him as before Avith 
the cry of iUaout and the exhibition of skins, but lost 



DESERTION OF TWO SHIPS. 83 

no time in tlie renewal of their former system of 
tliieving. 

It was now arranged that the two large vessels 
should remain to fish, while Davis in the pin- 
nace should stretch out into a higher latitude with a 
view to discovery. In pursuance of this plan he 
took his departure, and, continuing to range the 
coast to the northward, on the 28th he reached a point 
which he named Sanderson's Hope, in upwards of 
72^, still finding a wide open sea to the west and 
north. Here, the wind having shifted, Davis resolv- 
ed to hold on a western tack across this sea, and 
proceeded for forty leagues without sight of land or 
any other obstruction, when he was arrested by the 
usual barrier of an immense bank of ice. Tempted 
by an apparent opening, Davis involved himself in a 
bay of ice, and was obliged to wait the moment 
when the sea beating and the sun shining on this 
mighty mass should effect its dissolution. 

At length, on the 19th of July, he came in view 
of Mount Ealeigh, and at midnight found himself 
at the mouth of the inlet discovered in the first voy- 
age, and which has since been called Cumberland 
Strait. Next day he sailed across its entrance, and 
in the two following days ascended its northern shore, 
till he was again involved among numerous islands. 
He now concluded this strait to be an enclosed gulf, 
and retreated along the southern shore. He now 
crossed the mouth of an extensive gulf, in one part of 
which his vessel was carried along by a violent cur- 
rent, while in another the water was whirling and 
roaring as is usual at the meeting of tides. This was 
evidently the grand entrance to Hudson's Bay. 

Davis now hastened to the point of rendezvous 



84 SUBSEQUENT CAREER OF DAVIS. 

fixed witli tlie two other vessels ; but, to his deep dis- 
appointment and just indignation, lie found that they 
had departed. It was not without hesitation that, 
with his small stock of provisions he ventured to sail 
for England ; but he arrived safely. 

Davis had succeeded in reaching a much higher lati- 
tude than any former navigator, and, with the excep- 
tion of the barrier of ice on one side, had found the 
sea open, blue, of vast extent, and unfathomable 
depth. He considered, therefore, that the success of 
a spirited attempt was almost infallible. But three 
failures had exhausted all interest in the subject, and 
the invasion by the Spanish Armada which soon 
followed, engaged for a season all the energies of the 
nation. 

Davis tried in vain to procui'e means for another 
Arctic Expedition. He subsequently made several 
voyages to the East Indies, in the service of the 
Dutch, and was killed during a fight with Japanese 
pirates on the coast of Malacca in 1605. 




CHAPTER VI. 

ARCTIC VOYAGES OF WEYMOUTH, KNIGHT, 
AND HUDSON. 

In 1602, the Muscovy Company and the Levant 
Company united in new efforts for a North-west route, 
and sent out George Weymouth with two vessels, the 
Discovery and Goodspeed, which sailed on the 2d 
of May. 

On the 28th of June, Weymouth came in view of a 
snow-clad promontory on the American coast. The 
vessels were tossed to and fro by violent currents and 
involved in thick fogs, and they came quite near to 
an iceberg on which some of the crew landed. Hear- 
ing a great sound like the dashing of waves on the 
shore, they approached it, and were dismayed to find 
it " the noise of a great quantity of ice, which was 
very loathsome to be heard." The mist became so 
thick, that they could not see two ships' length, and 
on attempting to take down the sails, they were aston- 
ished to find them so fast frozen to the rigging that 
in "this chief est time of summer they could not be 
moved." Next day they renewed the attempt ; but it 
was only by cutting away the ice from the ropes that 
they could be made to move through the blocks. 
The following day the fog lay so thick and froze so 

85 



86 A COWAEDLY CREW. 

fast, that ropes, sails, and rigging remained immovable. 

These phenomena produced a disastrous effect on 
the minds of the sailors, who began to hold secret 
conferences, ending in a conspiracy " to bear up the 
helm for England." It was proposed to seize Wey- 
mouth, and confine him in his cabin till he gave his 
consent ; but the captain, receiving notice of this ne- 
farious design, called the seamen before him, and in 
presence of Mr. Cartwright the preacher, and Mr. 
Cobreth the master, called upon them to answer for 
thus attempting to overthrow a voyage fitted out at 
such ample cost by the honorable merchants. 

The men stood firm, and produced a paper signed 
by themselves, in which they justified the proposed 
step as founded on solid reason, Avithout any tincture 
of fear or cowardice. They represented, that if they 
should suffer themselves to be enclosed in an un- 
known sea, by this dreadful and premature winter, 
they would not only be in imminent danger of perish- 
ing, but could not hope to commence their career of 
discovery next year sooner than May ; while by setting 
sail in due time from England they might easily 
reach this coast in that month. Weymouth retired 
to his cabin to deliberate, when he heard it announced 
that the helm was actually borne up. Hastening on 
deck, and asking who had done this, he was answered, 
" One and all ; " and he found the combination such 
as it was impossible to resist, though he took occasion 
afterward to chastise the ringleaders. The men, how- 
ever, declared themselves ready to hazard their lives 
in any discovery which might be attempted to the 
southward. 

Descending the coast, Weymouth found himself at 
the entrance of an inlet, into which he sailed in a 



FATE OF CAPTAIN KN^IGHT. 87 

soTitli-west direction, a hundred leagues ; but encount- 
ering fogs and heavy gales, and finding the season far 
spent, he deemed it necessary to regain the open sea. 
This inlet was in fact the grand entrance of Hudson's 
Bay. 

In 55*^ Weymouth found a fair land, consisting of 
islands and "goodly sounds," apparently the place 
where the Moravian settlement of Nain was afterward 
formed. Soon after, a dreadful hurricane from the 
west seemed to take up the sea into the air, and drove 
the ships before it with the utmost impetuosity. Had 
it been from any other quarter they must have been 
dashed to pieces on rocks; however they ranged 
through the open sea, and in the greatest extremity 
"the Lord delivered us his unworthy servants." 
They had now an easy navigation to England. 

No farther attempts were made till 1606, when 
East India merchants fitted out a vessel of forty tons 
under John Knight, who had been employed in the 
Danish voyages to Greenland. On the 19th of June 
he had reached the coast of Labrador, but the vessel 
had been so much damaged by collisions with ice that 
it became necessary to repair it thoroughly, and for 
this purjDose it was hauled ashore in a little cove. 

On the 26th, Knight, with some of his men well 
armed, went across to the opposite coast in a boat, to 
take a survey of the country. Here the captain with 
two of his officers, went over a hill, leaving three 
men in charge of the boat, who waited the whole day 
in anxious expectation of the return of the party ; 
they then sounded trumpets, fired muskets, and made 
other signals but without effect. After waiting till 
eleven at night, they gave up hopes, and returned to 
the ship with the doleful tidings. The crew were 



88 AX ESQUIMAUX ATTACK. 

struck witli the deepest dismay at having thus lost 
their captain and best officers, and being themselves 
left in such deplorable circumstances. The boat was 
fitted out next morning for search, but could not cross 
the channel on account of the ice. 

On the night of the 28th, as the boatswain was keep- 
ing watch in advance of the tents, he suddenly saw 
rushing through the darkness a great body of men, 
who, on descrying him, let fly their arrows. He in- 
stantly fired, and gave the alarm ; but before the crew 
could start from bed and be mustered, the shallop was 
filled with fifty savages, who, with loud cries and men- 
acing gestures, showed themselves pre2:)ared for im- 
mediate attack. The English mustered only eight 
men and a large dog, and though the rain fell in tor- 
rents, they determined rather to perish bravely, assail- 
ing this savage enemy, than to wait their onset. They 
advanced, therefore, placing the dog foremost. This 
bold front appalled the savages, who leaped into 
their boats, and made off with all speed ; but they 
were entangled in the ice, and detained a considerable 
time, during which the pursuers continued firing, and 
the savages were heard " crying to each other, very 
sore." 

The mariners, placed in this alarming situation, 
made 'all the haste they could to fit their shattered 
bark for again taking the sea. Tliey had first to cut 
a way for her through the ice ; but they had nothing 
which could be called a rudder, and the leaks were so 
large, that the sailors could scarcely enjoy half an 
hour's relief from the pump. At length they suc- 
ceeded in reaching the coast of Newfoundland, and 
found, among the fishing vessels on that station, 
friends who supplied all their wants. After twenty 



Hudson's voyage towaed the pole. 89 

days spent in repairing tlieir ship they sailed for 
home. 

Captain Henry Hudson, a Londoner, of whose 
early life very little is known, was employed, as he 
says, ^' by certaine worshipfuU merchants of London, 
for to discover a passage by the North Pole, to Japan 
and China." With only ten men and his little son, 
he sailed in a small vessel on the first of May, 1607, 
with instructions to sail, if possible, directly over the 
North Pole. This was the first attempt to make this 
hazardous trip, and the first recorded voyage of this 
eminent navigator. 

On the 13th of June, the ship was involved in 
thick fog, the shrouds and sails being frozen ; but 
when it cleared next morning, the sailors descried a 
high and bold headland, on Greenland coast, mostly 
covered with snow, behind which rose a castellated 
mountain, named the Mount of God's Mercy. Pain 
now fell, and the air felt temperate and agreeable. 
They steered eastward to clear this coast ; but, after 
being for some time enveloped in fogs, again saw land, 
very high and bold, and without snow even on the 
top of the loftiest mountains. To this cape, in 73^, 
they gave the name of Hold-with-Hope. 

Hudson now took a north-eastward direction, and 
on the 27th, faintly perceived, amid fogs and mist, 
the coast of Spitzbergen. He still pushed northward, 
till he passed the 79th degree of latitude, where he 
found the sun continually ten degrees above the hori- 
zon, yet the weather piercingly cold, and the shrouds 
and sails often frozen. The ice obliged him to steer 
m various directions ; but embracing every opportu- 
nity, he pushed on, as appeared to him, to 81^, 
and saw land still continuously stretching as far as 



90 A MERMAID DISCOVERED. 

82^. He returned, coasting along Spitzbergen, some 
parts of which appeared very agreeable ; and on the 
15th of September arrived in the Thames. 

On Hudson's return from Spitzbergen, the London 
merchants still hoping to find a route to the North- 
east, sent him out on a voyage in that direction. On 
the 3d of June, 1608, he passed the North Cape, and 
pushed on to the north and east till he reached the 
latitude of 75^, when he found himself entangled 
among ice. He at first endeavored to push through, 
but failing in this attempt, turned and extricated 
himseK with only "a few rubs." On the 12th of 
June he experienced a thick fog, and had his shrouds 
frozen ; but the sky then cleared, and aif orded bright 
sunshine for the whole day and night. On the 15th, 
Thomas Hilles and Robert E-ayner solemnly averred, 
that, standing on deck, they had seen a mermaid. 
This marine maiden is described as having a female 
back and breast, a very white skin, and long black 
hair flowing behind ; but on her turning round they 
descried a tail as of a porpoise, and speckled like a 
mackerel. 

Hudson continued to push on eastward, between 
the latitudes of 74^ and 75^. On the 25th, heavy 
north and north-easterly gales, accompanied vrith fog 
and snow, obliged him to steer south-easterly ; and 
this course brought him to the coast of Nova Zembla. 
Here, he concluded that it was fruitless to attempt 
to hold a more northerly course and resolved to try 
the old and so often vainly-attempted route of the 
Waygatz. 

From this he was diverted by the view of a large 
sound, which appeared to afford an equally promising 
opening. On its shores also were numerous herds 



VOYAGE LN" THE HALF-MOON. V 

of walrus, from wMcli lie lioped to defray tL 
expense of tlie voyage. Nova Zembla, on tlie whole, 
seen under this Arctic midsummer, presented to Mm 
somewhat of a gay aspect. He says, it is "to man's 
eye a pleasant land ; much mayne land, with no snow 
on it, looking in some places green, and deer feeding 
thereon." The sound, however, terminated in a large 
river, and the boats soon came to anchorage in shallow 
water. The ice now came in great masses from the 
south, " very fearful to look on ;" and though " by the 
mercy of God and His mighty help," Hudson escaped 
the danger, yet by the 6th of July he was " void of 
hope of a north-east passage," and, determining to put 
his employers to no farther expense, hastened home 
to England. The " worshipfuU merchants," discour- 
aged by these failures, refused to fit out any more ex- 
peditions for him. 

The bold Englishman now sought employment 
from the Dutch East India Company, and sailed from 
the Texel under their auspices in a little vessel called 
the Half -Moon, with a crew of twenty men, on the 
25th of March 1609. 

On the 5th of May he passed the North Cape, and 
on the 19th came in view of Wardhuys. Here he 
turned his prow and steered across the Atlantic to 
America. His reasons for so doing are not known ; 
but it is conjectured that his seamen accustomed to 
seek India by the tropical route, were alarmed by the 
fogs, tempests, and floating ice of the north, and that 
Hudson preferred to seek for a north-western route. 

On the 2d of July Hudson reached the coast of 
Newfoundland, and then proceeding southward visit- 
ing several places along the coast, he arrived in Au- 
gust off Chesapeake Bay, where John Smith at that 



DISCOVERY OF THE HUDSOI^ RR^ER. 

ne was engaged in founding tlie first English settle- 
dent in America. Hudson then sailed northward, and 
came to anchor in what is now known as the Lower Bay 
of New York City. , 

After ascending the Hudson Eiver for about a hun- 
dred and fifty miles, Hudson began to perceive that 
the track to India was yet undiscovered ; so he turned 
his prow southward and beat slowly down the stream, 
having several fights with the natives on the way. 

On the 4th of October he left New York Bay, and 
proceeded to England, where he was detained for a 
while by an order of the English court, who were 
jealous of the enterprise of the Dutch. 

Hudson sailed on his last and lamentable voyage 
on the I7th of April, 1610. His one ship was pro- 
visioned for six months, and had been fitted out by 
eminent Englishmen. On the 11th of May he de« 
scried the eastern part of Iceland, and was enveloped 
in a thick south fog — ^hearing the sea dashing against 
the coast without seeinsr it. He was thus obli^red to 
come to anchor ; but, as soon as the weather cleared, 
he proceeded westward along the coast till he I'eached 
Snow Hill (Snaefell,) which rears its a^vful head 
above the sea that leads to the frozen shores of Green- 
land. On their way the navigators sa^v^ Hecla, the 
volcano of which was then in activity, vomiting tor- 
rents of fire down its snowy sides, "with smoke ascend- 
ing to the sky — an object not only feai"ful in itself, 
but AN^hicli struck them mth alarm as an indication of 
unfavorable weather. 

Lea^dng the Icelandic coast tliey now sailed west- 
ward, and, after being deceived by illusoiy a2:>pear- 
ances of land, at length saw the white cliffs of Green- 
land towering behind a mighty wall of ice. Without 




KSQUIMAUX SNOW HOUSKi 



Hudson's last voyage. 95 

attempting to approach the coast, Hudson sailed to- 
wards the south-west, and passed what he imagined to 
be Frobisher's Strait, which in fact long continued to 
be laid down on the coast of Greenland. Hudson now 
rounded Cape Farewell, and " raised the Desolations," 
making careful observations of those coasts, which he 
found not well laid down on the charts. The marin- 
ers soon began to descry, floating along, the mighty 
islands of ice, — a sight which appalled all but the 
stoutest hearts. Onward they sailed, however, some- 
times enjoying a clear and open sea, but often encom- 
passed by these mighty masses, or by the small and 
drifting heaps ; and at length they had to steer as it 
were between two lands of ice. They sometimes 
moored themselves, on occasions of peril, to these ice- 
bergs ; but seeing one of them fall with a tremendous 
crash into the sea, they no longer trusted to such a 
protection. 

On the 25th of June land appeared to the north. 
Was again lost sight of, and afterward discovered to 
the south ; so that they found themselves at the broad 
entrance of the channel which has since obtained the 
name of Hudson's Strait. They were now still more 
troubled with ice in various forms, particularly that 
of large islands standing deep in the water, which 
were more difficult to avoid from the violent ripples 
and currents. Thus they were often obliged, especially 
amid thick fogs, to fasten themselves to the largest 
and firmest of these masses, upon which they used to 
go out from time to time to procure the water melted 
in the hollows, which proved to be sweet and good. 

Amid these ^dcissitudes many of the sailors became 
fearful and some of them sick, and Hudson to encour- 
aQ;e them called them to^rether and showed them his 



96 TROUBLE WITH THE SAILOES. 

chart, from wMcli it appeared tliat tliey had penetrated 
farther into the straits by a hundred leagues than 
any former expedition ; he then put it to vote whether 
they should proceed on or not. 

This was a bold experiment, but did not succeed. 
Some, it is true, expressed themselves "honestly 
respecting the good of the action ;" others declared 
they would give nine-tenths of all they Avere worth, 
so that they were safe at home; others said they 
did not care where they went, so they were out of 
the ice. 

Hudson, vexed and disappointed, broke up the 
conference, and determining to follow his own course 
made his Avay onward, having sometimes a wide and 
clear sea, and being occasionally involved amid moun- 
tains of ice. Certain rocky islands, in which he found 
a tolerable harbor, were called " Isles of God's Mercy ; ■■ 
but even this refuge was rendered dangerous by hid- 
den reefs ; and the island adjoining to it contained 
only " plashes of water and riven rocks,'' and had the 
appearance of being subject to earthquake. 

At length they ariived at a broad opening, having 
on each side capes to which Hudson gave the names 
of the two chief patrons of the voyage, Wolstenholme 
and Digges. Landing at the latter and mounting a hill, 
the men descried some level spots abounding in sorrel 
and scurvy grass — ^plants most salutary in this climate : 
while herds of deer were feeding, and the rocks were 
covered with unexampled profusion of fowls. Seeing 
such ample materials both for sport and food, the crew, 
who had ever shown the most anxious concern for 
their own comfort, earnestly besought Hudson to allow 
them to remain and enjoy themselves for a few days 
on this agreeable spot ; but he would not consent as 



DISCOVERY OF Hudson's bay. 97 

tlie season for discovery was rapidly passing away. 

After proceeding a short distance tlirougli tlie open- 
ing, tlie coasts on each side were seen to separate, and 
lie beheld before him an ocean-expanse, to which the 
eye could discover no termination. It seemed to him, 
doubtless, a portion of the mighty Pacific, though 
really Hudson's Bay. Here, however, Hudson's nar- 
rative closes, without expressing those feelings of 
pride and exultation which must have filled his mind 
at this promised fulfillment of his highest hopes. The 
narrative of Pricket, one of Hudson's men, must be the 
foundation for the remaining history of the voyage. 

The 3d of August had now arrived, a season at 
which the boldest of northern navigators had been ac- 
customed to think of returning. Little inclined to 
such a course, Hudson continued to sail along the coast 
on the left, hoping probably before the close of 
Autumn to reach some cultivated and temperate sljiore 
where he might take up his winter-quarters. The 
shores along this bay, though not in a very high lati- 
tude, are subject to a climate the most rigorous and 
inclement. Entangled in the gulfs and capes of an 
unknown coast, struggling with mist and storm, and 
ill-seconded by a discontented crew, he spent three 
months without reaching any comfortable haven. 

It was now the 1st of November, the ice was clos- 
ing in on all sides, and nothing remained but to meet 
the cheerless winter which had actually begun. The 
sailors were too late at attempting to erect a wooden 
house; yet the cold, though severe, does not seem 
to have reached any perilous height. Their chief 
alarm was respecting provisions, of which they had 
now only a small remnant left. Hudson took active 
measures to relieve this want, and offered a reward 



98 IN" WINTER QUARTEES. 

to wlioeYer sliould kill beast, iisli, or bird; and 
"Providence dealt mercifully," in sending such a 
supply of wliite ^^artridges, tliat in three months they 
killed a hundred dozen. In the spring these birds 
disajDpeared, but were succeeded by flocks of geese, 
swans, and ducks, not denizens of the sjDot, but on 
their flio:ht from south to north. When these were 
gone the air no longer yielded a supply, but the sea 
began to open, and having on the first day taken ^ve 
hundred fishes, they were much encouraged ; but 
their success at fishing did not continue ; and being 
reduced to great extremity they searched the woods 
for moss. 

Hudson now undertook an excursion with a view 
to open an intercourse with the natives, but they fled, 
setting fire to the woods behind them. Parley was 
obtained with one, who was loaded with gifts, yet he 
never returned. Discontents arose as to the distribu- 
tion of the small remaining portion of bread and 
cheese, to allay Avhich the captain made a general and 
equal partition of the whole. This was a bad meas- 
ure among such a crew, many of whom knew not how 
" to govern their share," but greedily devoured it as 
long as it lasted. 

Hudson had from the first to struggle with an un- 
principled, ill-tempered crew, void of any concern for 
the ultimate success of the voyage. He had probably 
hoped, as the season should advance, to push on south- 
ward and reach next summer the wealthy regions 
which he was commissioned to search. Tlie sailors, 
on the contrary, had fixed their desire on " the cape 
where fowls do breed," the only place where they ex- 
pected to obtain both present supply and the means 
of returning to England. Kingleaders were not want- 



PEOaEESS OF THE MUTINY. 99 

ing to head tMs growing party of malcontents. At 
tlie entrance of tlie bay tlie captain had displaced Ivet, 
the mate, who had shown strong' propensities for re- 
turning, and appointed in his room Bylot, a man of 
merit, who had always shown zeal in the general 
cause. He had also chaDged the boatswain. 

Among the crew was a ^vretch named Green, whom 
Hudson had taken on board and endeavored to 
reclaim. He was possessed of talents which had 
made him useful, and even a favorite with his supe- 
rior ; and among other discontents of the crew, it was 
reckoned one that a veil was thrown over several fla- 
grant disorders of which he had been guilty. Yet 
some hot expressions of Hudson so acted on the fierce 
spirit of this ruffian, that, renouncing every tie of 
gratitude and all that is sacred among mankind, he 
became the chief in a conspiracy to seize the vessel 
and expose the commander to perish. 

After some days' consultation, the time was fixed 
for the perpetration of a horrible atrocity. On the 
21st of June, 1611, Green and Wilson the boatswain, 
came into Pricket the narrator's cabin, and announced 
their fatal resolution ; adding, that they bore him so 
much good- will as to wish that he should remain on 
board. Pricket avers most solemnly, that he exhaust- 
ed every argument which might induce them to desist 
from their horrid purpose, beseeching them not to do 
so foul a thing in the sight of God and man, which 
would for ever banish them from their native country, 
their wives, and children. Green wildly answered, 
that they had made up their minds to go through 
with it or die, and that they would rather be hanged 
at home than starve here. An attempt was then made 
to negotiate a delay of three, two, or even one day, 



100 THE APPEOACHING TRAGEDY. 

but all without effect. Ivet declaring that lie would 
justify in England the deed on which they had re- 
solved. Pricket according to his own story, then per- 
suaded them to delay till daylight the accomplishment 
of their crime. 

Daybreak approaching, Hudson came out of his 
cabin, when he was instantly set upon by Thomas, 
Bennet, and Wilson, who seized him and bound his 
hands behind his back ; and on his eagerly asking 
what they meant, told him he should know when he 
was in the sliallop. Ivet then attacked King, the car- 
penter, known as the commander's most devoted ad- 
herent. That brave fellow, having a sword, made a 
formidable resistance, and would have killed his as- 
sailant had not the latter been speedily reinforced. 
The mutineers then offered to him the choice of con- 
tinuing in the ship ; but he absolutely refused to be 
detained otherwise than by force, and immediately 
followed his master whom the conspirators were al- 
ready letting down the sides of the vessel. Hudson's 
son, a boy, was also sent into the boat. 

The mutineers then called from their beds and 
drove into the boat, six sick and infirm sailors whose 
support would have been burdensome. They threw 
after them the carpenter's box, with some powder and 
shot, and cutting loose from the boat sailed away. 
Hudson and his companions thus abandoned, were 
never heard of more ; and undoubtedly perished on 
those remote and desolate shores. 

As soon as the mutineers had time to reflect, rueful 
misgivings began to arise. Even Green, who noAv as- 
sumed command, admitted that England at this time 
was no place for them, nor could he contrive any 
better scheme than to keep the high sea till, by some 



ADVENTUEES OF THE MUTESTEEES. 101 

means or other, they miglit procure a pardon. Tlie 
vessel was now embayed and detained for a fortniglit 
amid fields of ice whicli extended for miles around it ; 
and, but for some cockle-grass found on an island tbe 
crew must bave perisbed by famine. Disputes witb 
respect to tbe steerage arose between Ivet and Bylot, 
wlio alone bad any pretensions to skill ; but tbe latter 
at lengtb guided tbem to Cape Digges, tbe longed-for 
spot, tbe breeding place for fowls, clouds of wbicb 
still continued to darken tbe air. Tbe party imme- 
diately landed, spread tbemselves among tbe rocks, 
and began to sboot. 

Wbile tbe boat was on sbore tbey saw seven canoes 
rowing towards tbem. Tbe savages came forward 
beating tbeir breasts, dancing and leaping, witb every 
friendly sign. Tbe utmost intimacy commenced, tbe 
parties went backward and forward, sbowed eacb 
otber tbeir mode of catcbing fowls, and made mutual 
presents and exchanges. In sbort, tbese appeared tbe 
most kind and simple people in tbe world, and " God 
so blinded Henry Green," tbat be viewed tbem witb 
implicit confidence. 

One day, amid tbe beigbt of tbis intimacy, Pricket, 
sitting in tbe boat, suddenly saw a native close to 
bim witb a knife uplifted and ready to strike. In 
attempting to arrest tbe blow bis band was cut, and 
be could not escape tbree wounds; after wbicb be 
got bold of tbe handle of tbe knife and wrenched 
it from tbe assassin, whom be then pierced witb bis 
dagger. At tbe same time a general attack was 
made on tbe English crew dispersed in different 
quarters. Green and Perse came tumbling down 
wounded into tbe boat, which pushed off, wbile 
Moter, " seeing tbis medley," leaped into the sea, 



102 THE EESTGLEADEES KILLED BY NATIVES. 

swam out, and, getting hold of the stern was pulled 
in by Perse. 

The savages then fired arrows at the boat, one of 
which struck Green with such force that he died on 
the spot, and his body was thrown into the sea. 
At length the party reached the vessel; but Moter 
and Wilson died that day, and Perse two days after. 
Thus perished the chief perpetrators of the late 
dreadful tragedy, visited by Providence with a fate 
not less terrible than that which they had inflicted on 
their victims. 

The crew thus deprived of their best hands were 
in extreme perplexity, obliged to ply the ship, .to and 
fro across the straits, and unable without the utmost 
fear and peril to venture on shore ; although it was 
absolutely necessary for obtaining provisions to carry 
them to England. They contrived during some 
anxious and unhappy excursions to collect three 
hundred birds, which they salted and preserved as 
the only stock whereupon to attempt the voyage. 
They suffered during the passage the most dreadful 
extremities of famine, having only half a fowl a day 
to each man, and considering it a luxury to have them 
fried with candles. 

Ivet, now the sole survivor of the ringleaders in 
the late dreadful transaction, sunk under these priva- 
tions. Tlie last fowl was in the steep-tub and the 
men were become careless or desperate, when suddenly 
it pleased God to give them sight of land, which 
proved to be the north of Ireland. On going ashore 
at Berehaven they did not meet with much sympathy 
or kindness; but by mortgaging their vessel they 
obtained the means of proceeding to PlymoutL ^ 



CHAPTER YII. 

AKCTIC VOYAGES OF BUTTON, BYLOT, 
BAFFIISr, MUNK, JAMES, AND OTHERS. 

NoTWiTHSTAi^Diisra tlie deplorable issue of Hudson's 
last voyage, tlie discovery thereby made of a great 
open sea in tlie west seemed to justify tlie most flat- 
tering liopes of accomplisMng a passage, and tlie next 
year, 1612, Captain Button was sent out, with. Bylot 
and Pricket as guides. He soon made his way through 
Hudson's Straits, and pushing directly across the 
great sea which opened to the westward, came in 
view of an insular cape, which afterward proved to be 
the most southern point of Southampton Island. 
Nothing else broke the apparent continuity of the 
ocean, and he cherished sanguine hopes that the first 
coast he should see would be that of Japan. Sudden- 
ly the alarm of land was given, when there appeared 
before him an immense range of Arctic coast, stretch- 
ing north and south, and barring all farther progress. 
Button, deeply disappointed, gave it the name of 
Hope Checked. 

Before he had time to look for an opening, the 
gloom of the northern winter began to gather, and he 
had to seek quarters for the season, and found them 
in the same creek and river which afterward became 

103 



104 CAPTAIN gibbon's ABVENTUKE. 

the principal settlement of tlie Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany. In spite of his best precautions lie lost several 
men through the severity of the cold, and was unable 
to extricate himself from the ice till the middle of 
June. He then steered northward, and sought an 
opening through the broad bay between the continent 
and Southampton Island, since called Roe's Welcome. 
Seeing this channel, however, become narrower and 
narrower till it apparently closed, he gave up the at- 
tempt, and after touching at several points of the 
island just named returned to England. 

Although Button had been thus baffled by the un- 
welcome encounter of the western shore of Hudson's 
Bay, the merchants still considered it by no means 
ascertained that this coa^ was so extensive and con- 
tinuous as to preclude all passage into the ocean be- 
yond America; accordingly they fitted out (in 1614) 
two vessels under Captain Gibbons, an officer of repu- 
tation, pronounced by Button " not short of any man 
that ever yet he carried to sea." But either his repui 
tation went beyond his meiits or fortune was singu- 
larly adverse, for never was there a more abortive 
voyage. He was early entangled in a bay on the 
coast of Labrador, in which he was detained the 
whole summer, and which was afterward dignified 
with the appellation of ^'Gibbons his Hole." Hav- 
ing here sustained some damage from the ice, he had 
no sooner extricated himself than he returned home. 

The merchant adventurers, still undismayed, sent 
out next summer (1615) the Discovery, under By- 
lot, who was accompanied by William Baffin, a skill- 
ful pilot and the most learned navigator of the age. 

Baffin had already made two voyages to the Green- 
land seas, the first in 1613, with six well-armed ships, 



Baffin's eaely voyages. 105 

whose object seems to liave been to chase away the 
whaling vessels of other nations. The next year, 
1614, he accompanied, as pilot, Robert Fotherby, 
who was sent out with the ship Thomasine, to accom- 
pany the great Grreenland fleet of ten ships and two 
pinnaces. While they were fishing, Fotherby and 
Baffin were to devote themselves mainly to dis- 
covery; but their cruise resulted in nothing of interest. 

Bylot and Baffin entered Hudson's Straits, and 
having on the 2d of June heard from the north- 
ern shore a great barking of dogs, landed and 
found five tents covered with seal-skin, among which 
were running about thirty-five or forty of these ani- 
mals, of a brinded black color, resembling wolves. 
They had collars and harness suitable for sledges 
lined with fish-bone which were standing by. In 
one of the houses was a bag with little images of 
men. 

The navigators soon descried a canoe with twenty 
individuals, whom they hailed with Greenland words 
of courteous import, holding up knives and other 
toys. Friendly salutations were given in return ; 
but neither party chose to trust themselves within 
reach of the other. At a little distance, the conflict of 
opposite currents amid large icebergs caused so fear- 
ful a grinding that they gave to the adjoining land 
the name of Mill Island. There they would have 
been in extreme danger " had not God, who is strong- 
er than ice or stream," delivered them. 

The policy of Bylot in this voyage seems to have 
been to keep close to the northern shore of the strait ; 
and thus, entering Hudson's Bay at a higher latitude, 
he hoped to keep clear of those lands which had 
barred the westerly career of his predecessors. On 



106 VOYAGE OF BYLOT AND BAFFm. 

reaching, therefore, Hudson's Isles of God's Mercy 
instead of steering southward to Cape Dudley Digges, 
he proceeded directly west, and arrived in the broad 
expanse afterward called the Fox Channel. 

At length he saw land, but it was bounded by a 
cape ^vdiich had every apj)earance of being the most 
northerly point of America. He called it Cape Com- 
fort ; though this name it soon appeared was prema- 
ture, for a single day had not ela]3sed when " his 
sudden comfort was as soon quailed." 

They were now on the eastern coast of Southamp- 
ton Island, which spread on every side its almost 
measureless extent, seeming to preclude every prospect 
of an opening on either hand. Disappointment, the 
lateness of the season, and the pressure of the ice, 
concurred in persuading Bylot that there was nothing 
to be hoped for here, and determined him to set sail 
immediately for England ; whither he carried a most 
unfavorable report as to any prospect of penetrating 
westward in that direction. 

But the adventurers were not discouraged by this 
adverse result. Turning their hopes to a different 
quarter, next year (1616) they again fitted out Bylot 
and Baffin with instructions no longer to attempt the 
passage by Hudson's Bay, but to enter Davis's Straits, 
and push due north till they reached lat. 80^, if an 
open sea should allow them to proceed so far ; then, 
turning to the w^estward, to round, if practicable, the 
extreme point of America, and to bear down upon 
Japan. 

Followiilg the course pointed out, Baffin reached, 
on the 30th of May, Hope Sanderson, the farthest 
point of Davis's progress, and soon afterward came to 
a number of small islands on which they found only 



JEEMORABLE DISCOVEEIES. 107 

females, some of very great age. These at first ran 
and liid themselves among the rocks ; but the sailors 
having reached two dames, one of whom was estima- 
ted at fourscore, and having presented to them bits 
of iron and the usual toys, the latter carried a fa- 
vorable report to their youthful country' women. 
The whole party soon came down to the shore, and 
four even went on board the boat. The charms of 
these ladies were heightened or disfigured by long 
black streaks made in their youth with a sharp instru- 
ment, and lodged so deep that they could not now be 
effaced. 

The navigators sailed onwards in lat. 74^, when 
they were arrested by a large body of ice, and obliged 
to turn into a neighboring sound to wait its melting. 
Here they received repeated visits from about forty 
natives, the only account of whom is, that they 
brought an extraordinary quantity of the bones of 
sea-unicorns or narwals, great numbers of which were 
seen swimming in the water. Hence this was called 
Horn Sound. The mass of ice now dissolved before 
the powerful influence of the sun, and the discoverers 
sailed northwards among its fragments ; but still, snow 
fell every day, and the shrouds and sails were often 
so hard frozen as to make it impossible to handle 
them. 

After having experienced a severe storm, the expe- 
dition discovered a soimd, which would have sup^^lied 
them with a multitude of whales had they been pro- 
vided with the means of capture : this they called 
"Whale Sound. Xext, in 78^, a23peared another inlet, 
the ^^-idest and greatest in all this sea, and which was 
named after Sir Thomas Smith, one of the main pro- 
moters of discovery. This openmg, ^vhich Baffin 



108 MEMORABLE DISCOVERIES. 

seems to liave examined very supei'iicially, abounded 
almost equally in whales, and caused particular aston- 
ishment by the extraordinary variation of the needle, 
to which nothing similar had ever been witnessed. 
Between these two sounds was an island which was 
named Hakluyt, after the venerable recorder of early 
English discoveries. 

Proceeding now along the south-western bound aiy 
of this great sea, the next " fair sound " received the 
name of Alderman Jones, a patron of the enterprise. 
In lat. 74*^, there appeared another broad opening 
which was called Sir James Lancaster's Sound ; but 
while Baffin calls it great, he seems scarcely to have 
noticed this future entrance into the Polar Sea; od 
the contrary, he observes, at the very same moment, 
that the hope of a passage became every day less and 
less. He sailed on ; but a barrier of ice prevented 
him from approaching the shore till he came within 
the "indraft" of Cumberland's Isles, "where hope oi 
passage could be none." 

Finding the health of his crew rather declining, he 
sailed across to Greenland, where an abundance oi 
scurvy-grass boiled in beer quickly restored tliem ; and 
"the Lord then sent a speedy and good passage 
homeward." 

On returning, Baffin expressed the most decided 
conviction that the great sea which he had traversed 
was a bay enclosed on all sides, and affording no 
opening into any ocean to the westward ; and his 
judgment was received by the public, who named it 
from him Baffin's Bay. He forcibly, however, repre- 
sented the great opportunities which it afforded for 
the whale-fish(3r3^, as those huge animals were seen 
sleeping in vast numbers on the surface of the water, 




ARCTIC AURORA. 




VIEW ON THE SPITZBERCrEN COAST. 



fotherby's voyage. 111 

without fear of tlie ship ^^ or of anything else,'' 
Baffin was killed near Ormuz in 1621, while engaged 
in an expedition against the Portuguese. 

In 1615, Fotherby who had Just returned from a 
voyage with Baffin, was sent out in the Hichard, a 
pinnace of only twenty tons. After many conflicts 
with ice and fog, he reached Hakluyt's Headland 
about the beginning of July. He soon began his career 
of discovery ; but a strong southerly gale driving him 
upon the ice, shattered his bark considerably, and 
obliged him to return. As soon as his vessel was re- 
fitted, he endeavored by a westerly course to find an 
opening among the ice, which projected in variout^' 
points and capes, but was drifted by it far to the 
southward, where he descried a snovry hill veiy high 
amid the clouds ; and the fog lying on each side made 
it appear like a great continent. 

It proved, however, to be only an island — probably 
Jan Mayen ; and as the shores presented nothing but 
drift-wood, and appeared as if fortified with castles 
and bulwarks of rock, no shelter was afforded from a 
heavy gale which began to blow. This induced him 
to stand out again to sea. He regained the northern 
point of Spitzbergen, and began to beat for a Polar 
passage. The wind, however, blew so strong from 
the north-north-east that he gave up the attempt, only 
resolving, on his way home, to take a survey of Hud- 
son's Hold-with-Hope. He came to the place where 
it ought to have been, but finding no land he insisted 
that Pludson must have been mistaken in the position 
assigned to it. Availing himself then of a brisk 
northerly breeze, he sailed for England 

Fotherby, on being asked as to the prospects of a 
passage through these seas, replied that though he had 



112 DANISH EXPEDITION-. 

not attained in this respect liis desire, nothing yet ap- 
peared to exclude hope. There was a spacious sea 
between Greenland and Spitzbergen, though much 
incumbered with ice ; and he would not dissuade 
the '• Avorshipf ul company " from a yearly adventure of 
.£200. The little pinnace, with ten men, in which he 
had sailed two thousand leagues, appeared to him 
more convenient for that purpose than any of larger 
dimensions. 

Denmark, which had always felt a natural interest 
in northern navigation, subsequently made an attempt 
to follow up the success of Hudson and Baffin. In 1619, 
Christian IV. sent out two well-appointed vessels 
under Jens Munk, who had the reputation of a good 
seaman. He succeeded in penetrating through Hud- 
son's Straits into Hudson's Bay, where he took upon 
himself to chano-e the whole nomenclature of that re- 

o 

gion, imposing the names of Christian's Straits and 
Christian's Sea, and calling the western coast New 
Denmark. But this innovation, which was contrary 
to every principle recognized in such cases, has not 
been confirmed by posterity. 

When September arrived, and the ice began to 
form, Munk established himself in winter quarters 
at the entrance of Cliestei*field Inlet. The season 
seemed to open with the best promise, commodious 
huts were constructed, and there were both abundance 
and variety of game. The Danes saw some brilliant 
aerial phenomena — at one time three suns in the sky, 
and the moon environed by a transj^arent circle, with- 
in which was a cross cutting through its centre ; but, 
instead of amusing their minds with these beautiful 
appearances, they were depressed by viewing them aa 
a mysterious presage of future evils. 



3fU]^K:'s DISASTROUS VOYAGE. 113 

Frost now set in with all its intensity ; their beer, 
wine and other liquors were converted into ice ; the 
scur^y began its ravages, and, ignorant of the mode 
of treating it, they employed no remedy except a 
large quantity of spirits, which has always been found 
to aggravate that frightful disorder. Unfit for the 
exertion necessary to secure the game with which the 
country abounded, they soon had famine added to 
their other distresses. Their miseries seem to have 
been almost without a parallel, even in the dark an- 
nals of northern navigation. Munk himself was left 
four days in his hut without food, and on crawling 
out, found that of the original crew of fifty-two, only 
two survived. 

The three men now determined to make an effort 
to preserve life. Gathering strength from despair, 
they dug into the snow, under which they found herbs 
and grass, which being of an anti-scorbutic quality 
soon produced a degree of amendment. Being then 
able to fish and shoot, they gradually regained their 
natural vigor. They equipped anew the smaller of 
the two vessels, in which they reached home on the 
25th of September, 1620, after a stormy and perilous 
voyage. 

Munk declared his readiness to sail as^ain : and 
there are various reports as to the cause why he did 
not. Some say, that having in a conference with the 
king, been stung by some expressions which seemed 
to impute the disasters of the voyage to his misman- 
agement, he died of a broken heart. But Forster re- 
lates, that during several successive years he was 
employed by the king on the North Sea and in the 
Elbe, and that he died in 1628, when engaged in a 
naval expedition. 



114 THE FOX AIS-D JAMES EXPEDITION. 

It^ 1631 an Englisli Expedition of two ships com- 
manded by Captains Fox and James, was sent to ex^ 
amine Hudson's Bay. Fox explored the channels on 
each side of Southampton Island ; that on the west- 
ern side he named Eoe's Welcome ; the other one he 
called from his own name, Fox Channel. 

Capt. James sailed to the southerly shores of Hud- 
son's Bay, and as winter came on found a harbor in 
what is now known as James's Bay. Snow soon fell to a 
great depth, the sails were frozen stiff, and the cables 
from accumulated ice became as thick as a man's body. 

Preparations were now made for a long residence 
at this place ; wood was cut for fuel, and search was 
made in every direction for traces of human beings, 
but none were found. A house was erected on shore 
in which a portion of the crew slept at night, armed 
with muskets to defend themselves in case of attack. 
The main-sail was used as a covering for the house. 
A well was dug, and the men spent much of their 
time in trapping and hunting foxes and other animals. 

In October, six of the men set out with dogs to hunt 
deer whose tracks had been seen, and returned next 
day with only one small animal, having passed a mis- 
erable night in the woods. Another party which 
went out was entirely unsuccessful in their hunt, and 
lost one of their number who was drowned when 
crossing a frozen pond. 

As the cold increased the ship was entirely covei'ed 
with snow and ice; and it was so beaten about against 
the ice by the winds and currents that there was great 
danger of its being destroyed. The captain now pro- 
posed to bore holes in the ship and sink it in shallow 
water, where it might safely remain till spring, when, 
perhaps, it could be again floated. This was a fear- 



/ft- / 





APPROACHING WINTER JAMES S BAY. 




THE ICE-BOUND HARBOR. 



A WINTEK OF SUEFERING 117 

ful expedient ; but after all tlie provisions and articles 
needed had been taken on shore, it was adopted; al- 
thougli tlie crew, generally never supposed that tlie ship 
could be raised again. 

They had much confidence in their captain and 
obeyed all his commands implicitly, "If," said he, 
" we end our days here, we are as near heaven as in 
England ; and w^e are much bound to God Almighty, 
for having given us so large a time for repentance, 
and having thus, as it were, daily called upon us to 
prepare our souls for a better life in heaven. He 
does not, in the meantime deny that we may use all 
proper means to save and prolong our lives ; and in 
my judgment, we are not so far past hope of return- 
ing to our native country, but that I see a fair way 
by which we may eiiect it.' 

Under direction of the carpenter timber was cut, and 
the building of a large boat was begun, in which they 
might escape if the ship was destroyed. All worked 
hard upon it, and the carpenter became so ill and weak 
that he could scarcely walk and subsequently died. 
The shoes of the men were all worn out, and they 
suffered much from cold for many successive months. 

During all this season of distress Captain James 
and his crew never omitted regular devotional ser- 
vices. They particularly solemnized Easter day, the 
26th of April 1632 ; and on that day while they were 
sitting round their fire, the captain proposed to attempt, 
on the first opening of the warm weather, to clear the 
ship of ice. This was considered by some of the crew 
impossible ; because they believed her to be filled with 
one solid mass of ice. The attempt, however, was re- 
solved upon ; but their only implements for the work 
were two iron bars and four broken shovels. 



118 FINAL ESCAPE. 

The time passed miserably on, till tlie middle of 
May, wlien efforts were made to clear the decks of 
snow. From this period the vessel began to occupy 
much of the attention of the captain and his crew. 
The great cabin was found to be free from ice 
and water, and a fire was lighted to clear and 
dry it. One of the anchors, which was supposed 
to have been lost, was found under the ice and recov- 
ered. Soon afterwards they came to a cask, and found 
it full of good beer ; which was a cause of great re- 
joicing. 

They then dug through the ice on the outside oi 
the vessel, and plugged the holes made in scuttling it. 
The weather grew warmer which thawed the ice in 
the hold, the water was pumned out, and many barrels 
of beer and salt beef were found in good condition. 

Open water first appeared on the 19th of June ; 
four days after the ship was reloaded, and the sails 
reset. A cross was then erected on land, and to the 
top of it were tied pictures of the king and queen. 
On the 2d day of July, after the captain and his crew 
had all devoutly paid thanksgiving to the Almighty 
for their providential deliverance, they weighed 
anchor, and proceeded on their voyage, and reached 
England in October. 

The Hudson's Bay Company an association of mer- 
chants was organized in 1670 under the patronage of 
Prince Kupert, second cousin of Charles II. Its very 
favorable charter conferred on them the right to the 
exclusive trade of the region, and territorial posses- 
sion of the vast domain. It imposed on the Com- 
pany the duty of making strenuous exertions for the 
discovery of a western passage ; but its officers paid 
little attention to the subject till 1719 when they fit- 



A LOST EXPEDITIOIT 119 

ted out an expedition under Knight and Barlow. 
These officers never returned, and a vessel sent next 
year under Captain Scroggs could learn no tidings 
of them. Nor was it till nearly fifty years afterward 
that the wrecks of their armament were found on 
Marble Island, where they had been cast ashore. 

In 1741, Captain Middleton obtained the command 
of two vessels, with which he examined Wager Inlet, 
and then sailed up Koe's Welcome — a channel lying 
west of Southampton Island — to its northern extremity. 
Here he found a spacious opening, which gave him at 
first great hopes of success ; but finding it shut in by 
land, he named it Repulse Bay. He then followed 
the coast in an easterly direction till he came to a 
channel, which, from the accumulation of ice at its 
entrance, he called the Frozen Strait. He returned 
home, expressing a decided conviction that no practi- 
cable passage existed in that direction. 

Mr. Dobbs, the mover of the expedition, was deeply 
disappointed by this result ; and from his own reflec- 
tions, and the statement of several of the inferior offi- 
cers, became satisfied that Middleton had given a very 
false and imperfect statement of the facts ; though such 
was not the case. £10,000 was subscribed for a new 
expedition, and a standing offer of a reward of j£20,000 
to the discoverers of a North-west passage was made 
by the English government. 

Captains Moor and Smith commanded this new 
expedition, which sailed in 1746 ; like many others 
equipped with peculiar pomp and circumstance, it 
entirely failed. They merely ascertained, what was 
pretty well known before, that the Wager Inlet 
afforded no passage ; and after spending a severe 
winter there, returned to England. 



120 HERNE AND PHIPPS. 

In 1770, Samuel Herne, an officer of the Hudson's 
Bay Company, descended to tlie moutli of the Cop- 
permine River, and thus opened the way for subse- 
quent explorers. His journal of the trip lay for many 
years in a " pigeon-hole " at the head- quarters of the 
company. When the fortunes of war found the French 
Admiral La Perouse the captor of Fort York, he 
there found Heme's journal, read it, and was so pleased 
with it that he told the officer that if he would pledge 
his honor that it should be published, he might have 
back his fort and all that pertained to it. The offer 
was accepted, the French retired, and thus it came 
about that Heme's record was put in print. 

In June, 1773, an expedition under Captain John 
Phipps (afterward known as Lord Mulgrave) consist- 
ing of two bomb- vessels — the " Racehorse " and the 
" Carcass " — sailed from England to search for the 
North Pole. The Carcass was commanded by Lieut. 
Lutwidge, under whom Horatio Nelson, afterward 
the naval hero of England, served as cockswain. The 
route was up the Greenland Sea, and the highest lat- 
itude reached was 80^ 48^, and the most easterly 
point was near the Seven Islands to the north of Spitz- 
bergen in longitude 20^. To the north and north- 
east was a solid pack of ice covered with snow. 
Here the ships were becalmed and frozen in amid a 
beautiful and picturesque scene ; but as the crew were 
stai'ting over the ice to attempt to reach the Dutch 
whaling-ships, the ice opened and the ships escaped 
to the south and reached England in September. 

In 1776, Captain Cook sailed from England on his 
last voyage, and in 1778 passed up Bering's Strait, 
expecting to proceed along the coast of America to 
Baffin's Bay, where a vessel was sent to meet him. 



CAPTAIN COOK S VOYAGE. 



121 



But lie was unable to penetrate further than Icy Cape 
on account of the ice, and after examining the coasts 
on both sides of the strait, he went to the Sandwich 
Islands, where he was killed in an affray with the 
natives. 

In 1789, Alexander Mackenzie reached the mouth 
of the great river which bears his name, and looked 
out on the Arctic Sea. In a second journey he crossed 
the Rocky Mountains, and followed Frazer River to 
its mouth at the Georgian Gulf, opposite Vancouver's 
Island, where he arrived in July, 1792. 




^-^^^ 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE ARCTIC WHALE-FISHERY. 

^ The Arctic seas are the native regions of the true 
whale, and he never leaves them. Man, ever search- 
ing for objects of use and profit, early discovered in 
these huge creatures a variety of substances fitted 
for the supply of important wants. No sooner, 
therefore, had the course of discovery opened a way 
into the seas of the north, than daring fishermen 
ventured thither and commenced a branch of com- 
merce which has proved of great importance to the 
world, but which is more full of adventure and peril, 
than any other occuj)ation in which man engages for 
a livelihood. 

As early as the ninth century, whales were cap- 
tured on the Norway coast ; but they were then 
valued chiefly for their flesh, which satisfied the 
hunger and even gratified the tastes of primitive man 
— whale's tongues being counted among the luxuries 
of the middle ages. In later years, when civilization 
rejected the flesh of the whale as an article of food, 
the oil was needed to supply the winter lamp, and 
for other purposes ; while the firm, flexible, elastic 
bone was found to be peculiarly adapted for various 
articles of dress, ornament, and common use. 

The English were the first who pushed whaling 

122 



EARLY FISHING EXPEDITIONS. 123 

operations into tlie higli latitudes of tlie Arctic seas. 
The discovery of Spitzbergen, by Barentz, was followed 
by the voyage of Stephen Bennet, who re-discovered 
Bear Island and named it Cherie Island. A series of 
voyages for the capture of walrus ensued, in which 
Bennet, Jonas Poole, and others took a part ; but the 
attention of these hardy walrus-hunters was soon 
attracted to a game more worthy of their steel. 

The voyages of Hudson led the way to a great and 
flourishing whaling trade, in which many nations 
competed for pre-eminence, and which opened one of 
the most interesting chapters in the history of En- 
glish and Dutch commercial enterprise. Henceforth, 
for more than two centuries, that part of the frontier 
of the unexplored region which extends from Spitz- 
bergen to Greenland, w^as annually frequented by 
fleets of whalers. 

Hudson, on returning from his Polar voyage, re- 
ported having seen large numbers of whales along 
the coast of Spitzbergen; and in 1611, the Muscovy 
Company sent out the " Mary Margaret " with every- 
thing then considered requisite for catching whales. 
Captain Edge, her commander, succeeded in taking 
one small whale, which yielded twelve tons of oil — 
the first, he believed, that was ever extracted in the 
Greenland seas. Soon afterward the Mary Margaret 
was wrecked, and her crew in three boats were found at 
Spitzbergen by Captain Poole, of the Elizabeth, a 
craft of fifty tons. Poole caught so many walrus on 
this trip, that their hides caused the destruction of 
his vessel, for they shifted in the hold and capsized 
her. Poole and his crew escaped, and were taken 
home by Captain Marmaduke. 
^ Notwithstanding the unfortunate termination of 



124 THE SPITZBERGEN WHALING-GROUNDS. 

their first whaling venture, the Muscovy Company 
sent out two ships under Poole the next season to 
follow up the undertaking. Meantime the Dutch, 
intent on every form of commercial adventure, had 
sent vessels to the Greenland seas for the same pur- 
pose. These the Englishmen considered as inter- 
lopers; and being the strongest party they com- 
pelled their rivals to leave. Next year the same 
company obtained a royal charter, prohibiting all 
besides themselves to intermeddle in any shape with 
this valuable branch of industrj^ To make good 
this privilege, the company fitted out an expedition 
of seven well-armed ships, under command of William 
Baffin, who, on reaching the seas round Spitzbergen, 
found them filled with ships of different nations, 
Dutch, French, and Spanish. All were compelled to 
depart, or to fish under the condition of delivering 
half of the proceeds to the English as the lords of the 
northern seas. 

This interference with the whaling vessels of other 
nations, was denounced as a flagrant example of the 
tyranny of the new mistress of the ocean ; and the 
Dutch determined not to submit, but to repel force 
by force. For this purpose, they sent out fleets so 
numerous and so well-armed, that for some years there 
w^as but slight interference with their rights. At 
length, in 1618, a general encounter took place, which 
resulted disastrously to the English, for one of their 
ships was taken and carried to Amsterdam. The 
Dutch government, anxious for peace, rewarded the 
captors but restored the vessel. This led to a com- 
promise, and. at last to a division of the Spitzbergen 
whaling-grounds among the nations whose ships had 
been accustomed to resort there. There was plenty 



ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN EDGE. 125 

of room for all ; but business did not prove profitable 
to the English owners ; the gains of their fishery 
were absorbed by losses ; and, eventually, for many 
years, scarcely an English ship sailed northward. 

But during the time that English mariners were in 
the ascendant in the Spitzbergen waters, from the 
voyage of stout Henry Hudson in 1607 to about 1622, 
they did excellent geographical work. Greenland 
was the name applied in those days to the Spitzber- 
gen Archipelago. In 1613 and 1614 they dis- 
covered Hope Island, and other islands to the south- 
eastward of Spitzbergen. In 1616 Captain Edge, one of 
the leading spirits in the early whaling enterprises, 
sent a pinnace to the eastward, to explore Edge Island, 
and other land on the east side, as far as 78^ north. 
This pinnace was a boat of twenty tons, wath a crew 
of twelve men. She is portrayed on the curious old 
chart of Spitzbergen in " Purchases Pilgrimes," pulling 
up Stor Fiord. The pinnace's crew killed a thou- 
sand sea-horses on Edge Island, and got 1,300 tons 
(barrels?) of oil. In 1613, the Dutch followed the 
example, and the Dutch and English seamen often 
came to blows over the exclusive right of the fishery. 
One of the English expeditions of this period discov- 
ered a large island to the eastward of Spitzbergen, 
which was never visited again until three Norwegian 
sealing vessels reached it in 1872. This discovery is 
thus recorded in Purchas : — 

"In the yeare 1617 the Company set out for Green- 
land fourteene sayle of ships, and their two pinnasses, 
furnished with a sufficient number of men and all 
other provisions fitting for the voyage, under the com- 
mand of Thomas Edge. . . . They employed a ship of 
sixtie tunnes, with twenty men in her, who discovered 




ANCIENT MAP OF SPITZBEKGEN-FUOM "TUIiCUAS IIIS TILGUIMS. 



DUTCH ENTERPRISE A DESERTED VILLAGE. 127 

to the eastward of Greenland, as far to the north- 
wards as seventie-nine degrees, an iland which he 
named Wiches Iland, and divers other ilands as by 
the map appeareth, and killed store of sea-horses 
there, and then came into Bel Sound, where he found 
his lading of oyle left by the captayne, which he 
tooke in. This yeare the Hull men set a small ship 
or two to the eastwards of Greenland, for the Hull 
men still followed the steps of the Londoners, and in 
a yeare or two called it their discoverie, which is false, 
and untrue, as by oath in the Admiraltie doth ap- 
peare. The Dutch likewise practice the same course." 

The Dutch whale-fisheries, unlike those of the 
English, became the source of great national wealth. 
An immense capital was invested in the business, and 
it was carried on wath characteristic prudence, dili- 
gence, and consequent success. A settlement was 
founded at the Smeerenberg Bay at the north-west 
corner of Spitzbergen, where the requisite apparatus 
for extracting oil and bone was erected on an immense 
scale. During the summer, Smeerenberg v\^as a 
crowded and populous village, and in this dreary 
corner of the world were to be found many of the 
luxuries of civilized life. 

But a change came over Smeerenberg. Gradually 
and at last almost entirely the whales,deserted its bay 
and sought refuge in distant waters. Thither their pur- 
suers followed them, and at last, finding the expense 
and delay of conveying their prizes to Smeerenberg 
too onerous, they contrived an arrangement by 
which the whale, being fastened to the sides of the 
ship, was cleared of its blubber and bone. Smeeren- 
berg then lost every foundation on which its pros- 
perity had rested. The furnaces, tanks and other 
8 



128 A WINTER IN SPITZBERCxEN. 

articles were carried away, and it is now difficult to 
trace the spot on wblcli stood that once flourishing 
village, in whose bay there had sometimes been as 
many as two hundred vessels. 

In 1633, the Dutch planned another settlement fur- 
ther to the north, and seven sailors volunteered for 
this arduous undertakino^. On the 30th of Aucjust 
the fleet left them in North Bay, where they not only 
undertook to live during the winter, but even to pro- 
vide themselves with fresh provisions. They visited 
all the surrounding shores, took three reindeer and a 
number of sea-swallows, collecting also a great quan- 
tity of a species of watercress. Their great ambition 
was to catch a whale ; but, though tantalized by the 
sight of many, all their attempts failed. 

Severe cold began to be felt in October, and on the 
15th, only a small portion of the sun's disk could be 
seen above the horizon, and in a few days it entirely 
disappeared ; there was still a faint twilight of eight 
hours, which was soon reduced to five, and became 
every day sliorter and shorter. In November, the 
cold increased to the utmost pitch ; they could not 
sleep in their beds, but were obliged either to crouch 
over the fire, or run full speed through the hut, to 
keep up the vital energy. At length they ranged all 
their couches round the fire-place and a stove, yet still 
found it necessary to lay themselves down between 
the stove and the fire, holding their feet to the very 
embers. 

Niii:lit and winter continued in their utmost in ten- 
sity till the 22d of January, when they again enjoyed 
a twilight of six hours ; at midday of the 26th, there 
was no longer a star to be seen ; but it was on the 
22d of February ere, from a mountain-top, they could 



"fighting the tiger." 129 

descry any portion of the sun's disk. Througliout 
tlie whole period tliey iiad dreadful contests with the 
Polar bear. 

Thus these seven persons passed through this hard 
winter without any severe attack of scurvy ; and on 
the 27th of May they were overjoyed by the view of 
a boat, which conveyed them to a neighboring bay, 
where seven Dutch ships had assembled for the fishery. 

The success of this experiment induced the Dutch 
Company to repeat the attempt in the following year, 
when seven other sailors, well furnished with victuals, 
and apparently with every means of withstanding the 
rigor of the climate, undertook to winter in Spitz- 
bergen. They appear, however, to have been of a 
less active disposition than their predecessors, and 
failed in every attempt to procure fresh victuals. 
The sun having quitted them on the 20th of October, 
they shut themselves up in their hut, out of which 
they scarcely ever stirred. In a few weeks they were 
attacked by scurvj^ under its most malignant form, 
which, amid this recluse life, and in the absence of 
fresh meat and vegetables, assumed continually a 
more alarming type, till three died, whose bodies the 
others with difficulty enclosed in coffins. The sur- 
vivors killed a dog and a fox, which afforded some 
relief, but not enough to arrest the progress of the 
malady. The bears began to approach the hut, and 
would have been a blessing, had the men retained 
strength either to shoot the animals or to drag home 
the carcass. The sun appeared on the 24th of Feb- 
ruary ; but they could no longer derive aid from this 
benignant luminary. The last entry in their journal 
is in the following terms : — 

"We are all four stretched on our beds, and are 



130 AN ARCTIC TRAGEDY. 

still alive, and would eat willingly, if any one of us, 
were able to rise and light a fire. We implore the 
Almighty, with folded hands, to deliver ns from this 
life, which it is impossible to prolong without food or 
any thing to warm our frozen limbs. None of us can 
help the other, each must support his own misery." 

Early in spring the fishing vessels arrived, and a 
party hastened to the hut. They found it so fast 
closed, that an entrance could only be effected by 
opening the roof. They found it a tomb. Three of 
the men were enclosed in the cofiins which had been 
framed for them ; the other four lay dead, two in their 
beds, and two on a piece of sail spread on the floor. 
These last had perished in consequence of mere ina- 
bility to make the effort necessary for lifting and 
dressing the food. 

About the same time the Dutch made an attempt 
to establish a colony on Jan Mayen Island, but with 
a result equally fatal. The journal of the unfortunate 
seamen contains little except a register of the weather. 

The next instance of wintering in Spitzbergen arose 
from necessity and disaster. A Russian vessel which 
had sailed from Archangel for the whale-fishery in 
1748, being driven by the wind to the eastern coast 
of Spitzbergen, found itself beset amid floating ice 
without hope of deliverance. One of the party recol- 
lected that a hut had been erected on this coast by 
some of his countrymen, under the apprehension of 
being obliged to spend the winter there. He and 
three others set out to discover the place. With 
much difiiculty they reached the shore, leaping from 
fragment to fragment of moving ice; then, spread- 
ing themselves in different directions, they found the 
cottage, which, though ruinous, afforded shelter for 
the night. 



ADVENTUEES OF KUSSIAN WHALEMEN. 131 

Early in the morning they hastened to the shore, 
to convey to their comrades this happy intelligence. 
But what must have been their horror, when they saw 
only a vast open sea, without a vestige of the ship, or 
even of the numerous icebergs which had been toss- 
ing through the waves ! A violent gale had dispersed 
them all, and apparently also sunk the vessel, which 
was never heard of more. 

These four unfortunate seamen, abandoned on this 
dreadful shore, having the long winter to pass with- 
out food, or arms and implements to procure any, did 
not, however, give way to despair. They had a gun 
with which they shot twelve deer ; then their ammu- 
nition failed ; but some pieces of iron were found on 
the shore, which they contrived to fashion into pikes. 
At the moment when their stock of venison was 
nearly exhausted, they found occasion to employ 
these weapons against a Polar bear by which they 
were assailed. The animal, being vanquished and 
killed after a formidable struggle, supplied for the 
present all their wants. His flesh was food, his skin 
clothing, his entrails, duly prepared, furnished the 
string which alone had been wanting to complete a 
bow. With that instrument they were more than a 
match for the reindeer and the Arctic fox, with the 
spoils of which they filled both their pantry and their 
wardrobe; and thenceforth they avoided, unless in 
cases of necessity, the encounter of the bear. Being 
destitute of cooking utensils, they were obliged to 
devour the food nearly raw-^dried either by suspen- 
sion in the smoke during the long winter, or by ex- 
posure to the heat of the sun during the short 
summer. Yet this regular supply of fresh meat, 
and, above all, the constant exercise to which neces- 



132 SIX YEAES OF PERIL. 

sity prompted, enabled them to preserve their health 
entire during six years, in which they looked in vain 
for deliverance. In this time they killed ten bears, 
two hundred and fifty reindeer, and a multitude of 
foxes. 

At the end of the six years one of the men died, when 
the three survivors sunk into despondence, giving up 
all hopes of relief, and looking forward to the mo- 
ment when the last of them would become the prey 
of the bears. Suddenly, on the 1 5th of August, 1749, 
they descried a vessel at sea. They lighted fires on 
the heights, hoisted a flag formed of reindeer skins, 
and were at length discovered by the ship, which 
proved to belong to their native country. 

The example thus involuntarily set by these Rus- 
sian sailors has been followed, to a considerable 
extent, by their countrymen, some of whom have 
since regularly wintered in huts on the Spitzbergen 
coast, and employed themselves in chasing the walrus 
and seal along the shore, the deer and Arctic fox in 
the interior. They are constantly engaged in hunt- 
ing, unless when interrupted by tempest ; and, even 
when the hut is blocked up with snow, they find 
their way out by the chimney. 

Commodore Jansen, of the Dutch Navy, makes the 
following interesting remarks on the Spitzbergen 
fishery of his countrymen : — "When our whalers first 
came to Spitzbergen, they met with the whales in 
great quantities, enjoying all the luxury of this most 
exquisite feeding-ground, the best perhaps in the 
whole Arctic region. The whales were found sport- 
ing in open water off shore, with their huge backs 
above water, or taking their siesta in a calm bay, 
surrounded by abundance of food. This was a most 



THE whale's paradise. 133 

glorious time for whales — tlie paradise of their history. 
In spite of the yearly increase of Avhalers, and the 
great number of whales that were killed on the same 
spot, they always resorted to this favorite ground. 

" During this first period, called the ' Shore Fish- 
ery,' we had an oil-boiling establishment at Smeeren- 
burg, on Amsterdam Island. Every year our whalers 
went straight to this island ; each vessel had six or 
seven boats, and a large complement of men, who 
were employed in killing whales, bringing them 
ashore, and making oil as fast as possible. Thousands 
and thousands of whales were killed, and at last, 
from about 1640-50, they ceased for a time to come 
at all to the west coast of Spitzbergen. As soon as 
the scarcity of whales was felt, the directors of the 
Dutch Whaling Company made great efforts to follow 
them to their place of retreat. Several ships were 
sent out on exploring expeditions, but they did not 
find any islands besides those round Spitzbergen, nor 
any whaling-ground as easy and profitable as Smeer- 
enburg and its vicinity had been." 

The year 1777 was one which exhibited, on a large 
scale, all the vicissitudes of this occupation. Captain 
Broerties, in the Guillamine, arrived that year on the 
2 2d of June at the great bank of northern ice, where 
he found fifty vessels moored and busied in the fishery. 
The day after, a tempest drove in the ice with such 
violence that twenty-seven of the ships were beset, 
of which ten were lost. The Guillamine with four 
other ships, succeeded in reaching a narrow basin, 
enclosed by icy barriers on every side. 

On the 1st of August the ice began to gather thick, 
and a violent storm driving it against the vessels, 
placed them in great peril for a number of days. On 



134 SHIPWRECKS. 

the 20 til, a dreadful gale arose from the north-east, in 
which the Guillamine suffered considerable damage. 
In this awful tempest, out of the five ships two went 
down, a third sprung a leak, and their crews were 
taken on board of the two remaininor barks. 

On the 25th these were completely frozen in, and it 
was resolved to send a party of twelve men to seek 
aid from four vessels which a few days before had 
been driven into a station at a little distance ; but by 
the time of their arrival, two of these had been dashed 
to pieces, and the others were in the most deplorable 
condition. 

Meantime the Guillamine and her companions 
drifted in sight of Gale Hamkes' Land, in Greenland, 
and the tempest still pushing them gradually to the 
southward, Iceland at length appeared on their left. 
The crews were beginning to hope that they might 
reach a harbor, when, on the 13th of September, a 
whole mountain of ice fell upon the Guillamine. 
The men, half naked, leaped out upon the frozen sur- 
face, saving with difficulty a small portion of their 
provisions. The broken remnants of the vessel were 
soon buried under enormous piles of ice. By leaping 
from one fragment of ice to another, the men contrived 
to reach the other vessel, which, though in extreme 
distress, received them on board. Shattered and 
overcrowded, she was obliged immediately after to 
accommodate fifty other seamen, the crew of another 
vessel which had just gone down, the chief har- 
pooner and twelve of the mariners having perished. 
These numerous companies, squeezed into one crazy 
bark, suffered every kind of distress, and famine, in 
its most direful forms, began to stare them in the 
face. 



MEMORIALS OF THE HOLLANDERS. 135 

All remoter fears, however, gave v^ay, when in 
October, the vessel went to pieces in the same sud- 
den manner as the others, leaving to the unfortunate 
sailors scarcely time enough to leap upon the ice 
with their remaining stores. With great difficulty 
they reached a field of some extent, and contrived 
with their torn sails to rear a sort of covering ; but, 
sensible that, by remaining on this desolate spot, they 
must certainly perish, they saw no safety except in 
scrambling over the frozen surface to the coast of 
Greenland, which was in view. With infinite toil 
they effected their object, and happily met some 
inhabitants who received them hospitably, and 
regaled them with dried fish and seals' fiesh. Thence 
they pushed across that dreary region, treated some- 
times well, sometimes churlishly ; but by one means 
or other they succeeded at length, on the 13th of 
March, in reaching the Danish settlement of Frede- 
rikshaab, where they were received with the utmost 
kindness. 

The whaling trade of the Hollanders gradually came 
to an end in the last half of the last century. Many 
names round the Spitzbergen shores, and large num- 
bers of graves, remain as memorials of their former 
hardihood. 



CHAPTER IX. 
THE ARCTIC WHALE-FISHERY. 

(continued.) 

In 1719 tlie Dutch opened a whale-fishery in 
Davis' Strait, which proved very remunerative and 
comparatively safe; for, in a period of sixty years, 
out of over three thousand ships fishing there, only 
sixty-two were wrecked. English whalers soon 
began to frequent the same fishery ; but in spite of 
old William Baffin's judicial advice, no vessel ever 
followed in his track until 1817, and tlie whales were 
permitted to remain for two centuries in tranquil 
enjoyment of the North Water of Baffin's Bay. 
Baffin liad gallantly led the way thither and no man 
had dared to follow him. At last two English whalers 
successfully j^assed the middle pack, and found 
whales so plenty that from that day to this, very few 
years have passed during which whalers have not 
forced that barrier. 

Melville Bay used to be a place of dread and anxi- 
ety for the whaling fleet ; for when a southerly wind 
brought the drifting pack in violent and irresistible 
contact with the land-floe, the ships, slowly creeping 
along its edge, were frequently crushed like so many 
walnuts. In 1819, as many as fourteen ships were 

136 



WHALINa DISASTERS IN MELVILLE BAY. 137 

smashed to pieces in this way; in 1821, eleven; and 
in 1822, seven. 

The year 1830 was the great season of disaster for 
the whalers, for nineteen ships were entirely destroyed, 
occasioning immense loss. On the 19th of June, a 
fresh gale from the south-west drove masses of ice 
into Melville Bay, and nipped the whole fleet against 
the land-floe, about forty miles to the southward of 
Cape York. In the evening the gale increased, and 
the floes began to overlap each other. A huge floe 
then came down upon the devoted ships, and a scene 
of indescribable horror ensued. In a quarter of an 
hour several fine ships were converted into shattered 
fragments ; the ice, with a loud grinding noise, tore 
open their sides, masts were seen falling in all direc- 
tions, great ships were squeezed flat and thrown 
broadside on to the ice, and one whaler, the " Kattler," 
was literally turned inside out. The shipwrecked 
sailors only just had time to jump on the ice, and 
take refuge on board their more fortunate consorts — 
for even in 1830 several ships escaped by digging 
deep docks in the land ice. It must be under- 
stood that there is little dauQ-er of loss of life in 

o 

Melville Bay, for even if a solitary whaler is de- 
stroyed, when no other is in sight, the retreat in 
boats to the Danish settlements is generally prac- 
ticable and easy. When the fearful catastrophe 
occurred in 1830, there were a thousand men en- 
camped on the ice, the clusters of tents were a scene 
of joyous dancing and frolic, for Jack had got a 
holiday, and the season was long remembered as 
"Baffin's Fair." 

The whale-fishery has been carried on from the 
United States with greater vigor and success than 



138 YANKEE WHALEMEN. 

from any other country, and from an early period. 
In the middle of the eighteenth century, the business 
was a very lucrative one ; and several flourishing 
towns were built up thereby. At the commencement 
of the Revolutionary War, Massachusetts alone had 
nearly two hundred vessels engaged in the northern 
seas, besides many in the southern. The great Eng- 
lish Statesman, Burke, in 1774 paid the following 
tribute to Yankee enterprise : — 

" Look at the manner in which the New England 
people carry on the whale-fishery. While we follow 
them among the tumbling mountains of ice and 
behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen 
recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis Strait ; while we 
are looking for them beneath the Arctic circle, we 
hear that they have pierced into the opposite region 
of polar cold ; that they are at the antipodes, and 
engaged under the frozen serpent of the South. Falk- 
land Island, which seemed too remote and too roman- 
tic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is 
but a stage and resting-place for their victorious 
industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discour- 
aging to them than the accumulated winter of both 
the Poles. We learn that while some of them draw 
the line or strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, 
others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic 
game along the coast of Brazil." 

The war put a temporary stop to the whaling bus- 
iness of the United States, but it was renewed with 
energy as soon as peace was declared, and again 
broken up by the war of 1812. Its recovery was, 
however, rapid. In 1844, the American whaling 
fleet comprised six hundred and fifty vessels, manned 
by over seventeen thousand men, while the English 



THE DUNDEE WHALIIS^G STEAMERS. 139 

fleet at the same date numbered only eiglity-iive ves- 
sels. In 1849, the American whaling fleet was nearly 
as large as in 1844. The Northern Pacific, extend- 
ing from the coast of America to Kamchatka, was at 
that time the great harvest field of American whalers, 
and Bering Strait, and the Arctic Ocean to which it 
leads have since been visited by intrepid American 
whalemen. 

Owing to the scarcity of whales, the use of gas, 
and the discovery of petroleum, the whaling business 
of the United States has dwindled down to very 
small proportions compared with what it once was. 
Dangers, disasters, and sufferings are, however, still 
incident to the profession. In 1871, the North-west 
whaling fleet was shut in by the ice, and many of 
the ships had to be abandoned. Quite recently three 
New Bedford whalers have been lost in Hudson's 
Bay, and another which has just returned was impris- 
oned for three months amid the desolations of Eepulse 
Bay. 

Although never wholly abandoned, the whaling 
trade of Great Britain fluctuated for many years ; 
until it was found that an Indian fibre, when manip- 
ulated with whale oil, could be manufactured into a 
great variety of useful fabrics. The extension of the 
manufacture of jute in Dundee, Scotland, caused the 
revival of the whale-fishery in Baffin's Bay. A mil- 
lion bales of jute are now annually imported into 
Dundee, equal to one hundred and forty-three thou- 
sand tons ; and the bulk of the whale oil is required 
by the jute manufacturers of Dundee and the neigh- 
borhood. Thus the port of Dundee has now become 
the centre of the English whale-fishing trade ; and car- 
goes of oil from the Arctic regions may be seen dis- 



140 



RESCUE OF THE POLARIS CREW. 



charging alongside of cargoes of jute from Calcutta, 
both being essential to the prosperity of the port. Of 
late years steam has made a great change in naviga- 
tion, and the steam whalers are not exposed to the 
same risks and detentions as fall to the lot of sailing 
ships. The first steam whaler sailed from Dundee in 
1858, and now a whaling fleet of ten steamers leaves 
every spring for Baffin's Bay and returns in the fall. 
Each carries eight whale boats, manned by nearly 
the whole crew of sixty men ; for few remain on the 
ship when the cry of "There she spouts!" is heard. 
It was a steamer of this line, the Ravenscraig, 
which rescued the crew of the wrecked Polaris, and 
the party were carried to Dundee in two others, the 
Intrepid and the Arctic. The latter steamer had, dur- 
ing her trip, penetrated into the Gulf of Boothia. 




CHAPTER X. 

CRUISE OF THE ISABELLA AND ALEX- 
ANDER. 

(jOHK BOSS — PARKY.) 

The Northern seas, as a theatre of adventure, had 
heen unoccupied for half a century, and the grand 
question in which England had taken so deep an in- 
terest was still open. For several years preceding 
1818, vast masses of ice had floated down from the 
regions of Baffin's Bay, and an unusual opportunity 
of discovering a North-west passage to the Pacific 
Ocean, seemed to present itself. 

In that year the English government fitted out two 
expeditions ; one to search for the North-west passage, 
the other to attempt a voyage across the Pole. The 
first consisted of the Isabella of 385 tons, commanded 
by Captain John Ross, an officer of reputation and 
experience, who had twice wintered in the Baltic, had 
been employed in surveying the White Sea, and been 
as far north as Bear Island ; and the Alexander of 
252 tons, commanded by Lieutenant Wm. E. Parry, 
afterwards famous as an Arctic explorer. 

On the 18th of April the vessels leffc the Tham.es, 
and on the 27th of May came in view of Cape Fare- 
well, round w^hich as usual were floatinfr numerous 
and lofty icebergs of the most varied forms and tints. 

141 



142 A DAI^^ISII BEAUTY. 

On the 14tli of June tliey reached the Whale Islands, 
where they were informed by the governor of the 
Danish settlement, that the past ^vinter had been un- 
commonly severe — the neighboring bays and straits 
havinfi^ been all frozen two months earlier than usual — 
and that some of the channels northward of his station 
were still bound in with ice. 

On the 17th of June, an impenetrable barrier of ice 
stopping their course, they fastened to an iceberg hav- 
ing forty-five whale-ships in company. At length the 
ice attached to the eastern shore broke up, though 
still forming a continuous rampart at some distance 
to the westward, but in the intermediate space they 
were enabled to move forward slowly along the coast, 
laborine: throucrh narrow and intricate channels amid 
mountains and loose fragments of ice near the Danish 
settlement. Their detention had not lacked amuse- 
ment ; the half-caste sons and daughters of Danes and 
Esquimaux danced Scotch reels with the sailors on 
the deck of the Isabella ; Jack Saccheous, a native of 
Greenland, who accompanied the expedition as inter- 
preter, was master of ceremonies. 

A daughter of the Danish resident, about eighteen 
years of age, and by far the best looking of the 
group, was the object of Jack's particular attentions; 
whicli being observed by one of the officers, he gave 
him a lady's shawl, ornamented with spangles, as 
an offering for her acceptance. He presented it to 
the damsel, who bashfully took a pewter ring from 
her finger and presented it to him in return. 

Proceeding along a high mountainous coast, the 
expedition came to a tribe of Esquimaux who seem- 
ed to exist in a state of the deej^jest seclusion. They 
had never before seen men belonging to the civilized 




AN ICE CA'VHKDKAL. 



A SECLUDED EACE. 145 

world, or of a raice different from tlieir own. The 
first small party wliom the navigators approached 
showed every sign of the deepest alarm; dreading, 
as was afterward understood, a fatal influence from 
the mere touch of these beings of an unknown spe- 
cies. Yet they seem to have felt a secret attraction 
towards the strangers, and advanced, holding fast the 
long knives lodged in their boots, and looking signifi- 
cantly at each other. 

Having come to a chasm which separated them 
from the English, they made -earnest signs that only 
the interpreter, who bore a resemblance to themselves, 
should come across. He went forward and offered 
his hand. They shrunk back for some time in alarm ; 
at length the boldest touched it, and finding it flesh 
and blood set up a loud shout, which three others 
joined. The rest of the party then came up, to the 
number of eight, Avith fifty dogs which helped their 
masters in raising a tremendous clamor. 

Eoss and Parry now thought it tim^ to come for- 
ward. This movement excited alarm and a tendency 
to retreat ; but Saccheous having taugtt these officers 
to pull their noses, this sign of amity was graciously 
accepted. A mirror was now held up to them, and on 
seeing their faces in it they showed the greatest aston- 
ishment ; they looked around on each other a few 
moments in silence, then set up a general shout, suc- 
ceeded by a loud laugh of delight and surprise. 

The ship was the next object of their speculation. 
They began by endeavoring to ascertain its nature 
by interrogating it, for they conceived it to be a huge 
bird, spreading its vast wings and endowed with 
reason. One of them, pulling his nose with the ut- 
most solemnity, began an address ; 



146 ESQUIMAUX IDEAS OF A SHIP. 

" Wlio are you ? Whence come you ? Is it from 
tlie sun or tlie moon ?" 

The ship remaining silent, they at length applied 
to Saccheous, who assured them that it was a frame of 
timber, the work of human art. To them, however, 
who had never seen any wood but slight twigs and 
stunted heath, its immense planks and masts were ob- 
jects of amazement. What animal, they also asked, 
could furnish those enormous shins which were spread 
for the sails. 

Their admiration was soon followed by a desire to 
possess some of the objects which met their eyes, but 
with little discrimination as to the means of effecting 
their end. They attempted first a spare topmast, then 
an anchor ; and these proving too ponderous, one of 
them tried the smith's anvil ; but finding it fixed, made 
off with the large hammer. Another wonder for 
them was to see the sailors mounting to the topmast . 
nor was it without much hesitation that they ventured 
their own feet in the shrouds. A little terrier dog 
appeared to them a contemptible object, wholly unfit 
for drawing burdens or being yoked in a sledge, while 
the grunt of a hog filled them with alarm. 

These Esquimaux had a king who ruled seemingly 
with gentle sway ; for they described him as strongs 
very good and very much beloved. The discoverers 
did not visit the court of this Arctic potentate ; but they 
understood that he drew a tribute, consisting of train- 
oil, seal-skins, and the bone of the imicorn. Like 
other Greenlanders, they had sledges drawn by large 
and powerful teams of dogs. They rejected with hor- 
ror biscuit, sweetmeats and spirits ; train-oil, as it 
streamed from the seal and the unicorn, alone grati- 
fied their palate. Captain E-oss, swayed by national 




CAPE ISABELLA, 




CAPE ALEXANDER. 



THE AECTIC HIGHLANDERS. 149 

impressions, gave to this tribe tlie name of Arctic 
Highlanders. In the northern part of this coast the 
navigators observed a remarkable phenomenon, — -a 
range of cliffs, the snowy covering of which had ex- 
changed its native white for a tint of dark crimson. 
The latest observations have established its vegetable 
origin. 

Having now passed Cape Dudley Digges, Captain 
Eoss found himself among those spacious sounds 
which Baffin had named but so imperfectly described. 
He seems, however, to have followed the same hasty 
method. He sailed past Wolstenholme and Whale 
Sounds without even approaching their entrance, 
concluding them to be blocked up with ice, and to af- 
ford no hope of a passage. Eoss next came to Smith's 
Sound, which Baffin had described as the most spa- 
cious and promising of the whole circuit of these coasts. 
It was viewed with greater attention ; but believed to 
be completely enclosed by land. The two capes at 
its entrance were named after the ships Isabella and 
Alexander. He then came to a spacious bay, which 
had hitherto been unknown and unobserved, and 
afterward to that which Baffin had called Jones's 
Sound ; but in respect to both was led to a prompt 
and unfavorable conclusion. 

On the 30th of August, the expedition came to a 
most magnificent inlet, bordered by lofty mountains 
of peculiar grandeur, while the water being clear and 
free from ice, presented so tempting an appearance 
that it was impossible to refrain from entering. This 
channel, which soon proved to be the Lancaster 
Sound of Baffin, was ascended for thirty miles ; during 
which run, officers and men crowded the topmast 
filled with enthusiastic hope, and judging that it af- 



150 SIGN"AL OF EETUEK 

forded mucli fairer liopes of success than any of those 
so hastily passed. Captain Ross however, and those 
whom he consulted, never showed any sanguine ex- 
pectations. He soon thought that he discovered a 
high ridge stretching directly across the inlet ; and 
though a great part of it was deeply involved in mist, 
yet a passage in this direction was judged to be hope- 
less. The sea being open, the ship proceeded ; but an 
officer came down from the crow's nest, stating that 
he had seen the land stretching very nearly across the 
entire bay. Hereupon it is said, all hopes were re- 
nounced even by the most sanguine, and Captain Ross 
sailed onward merely for the purpose of making some 
magnetical observations. 

At three o'clock, the sky having cleared, the com- 
mander himself went on deck, when he states that he 
distinctly saw across the bottom of the bay a chain of 
mountains continuous and connected wdth those which 
formed its opposite shores. The weather then becom- 
ing unsettled, he made the signal to steer the vessels 
out of Lancaster Sound. Lieutenant Parry, however, 
declares that to him, in the Isabella, this signal ap- 
peared altogether mysterious, being himself full of the 
most sanguine expectations, and seeing no ground 
for this abrupt retreat ; but his duty obliged him to 
follow. 

On regaining the entrance of this great channel, 
Captain Ross continued to steer southward along the 
western shore of Baffin's Bay and Davis's Strait, with- 
out seeing any entrance which afforded equal promise, 
and returned home early in October. 

Ross arrived in England under decided conviction 
that Baffin's observations had been perfectly correct, 
and that Lancaster Sound was a bay. 



CHAPTEE XL 
CEUISE OF THE HECLA AND GRIPER 

(PAEEY ANT> LIDDON.) 

It being determined that a new expedition should 
"be fitted out and intrusted to Lieutenant Parry, that 
he might fulfill, if possible, his own sanguine hopes 
and those of his employers, he was furnished with 
the Hecla of 375 tons, and a crew of fifty-eight men ; 
and with the Griper gun-brig of 180 tons and thirty- 
six men, commanded by Lieutenant Liddon. These 
ships were made as strong and as well-fitted as possi- 
ble for the navigation of the Arctic seas ; and were 
stored with ample provisions for two years, a copious 
supply of antiscorbutics, and every thing which could 
enable the crews to endure the extreme rigors of a 
Polar winter. 

Lieutenant Parry, destined to outstrip all his prede- 
cessors in the career of Arctic discovery, left the Nore 
on the 11th of May, 1819, and on the 15th of June 
came in view of the lofty cliffs of Cape Farevv^ell. On 
the 18th the ships first fell in with icebergs, and made 
an effort to push through the icy masses in the direc- 
tion of Lancaster Sound ; but these suddenly closed 
upon him, and on the 25th the two ships Avere immove- 
ably beset ; but on the second day the ice was loosened 
and driven against them with much violence. 

151 



152 ENTERING LANCASTER SOUND. 

Resigning the idea of reacliing Lancaster Sound by 
tlie most direct route, tlie explorers coasted northward 
along the border of this great icy field in search of 
open water, and proceeded, till they reached lati- 
tude 75^. As every step was now likely to carry 
them farther from their destination. Parry determined 
upon a desperate push to the westward ; and by 
sawing and warping, finally penetrated the icy bamer 
and saw the western shore clear of ice extending be- 
fore them. 

The navigators now bore directly down upon Lan- 
caster Sound, and on the 30th of July found them- 
selves at its entrance. They felt an extraordinary 
emotion as they recognized this magnificent channel, 
with the lofty cliffs by which it was guarded, aware 
that a very short time would decide the fate of their 
grand undertaking. They were tantalized, however, 
by a fresh breeze coming directly down the sound, 
which suffered them to make only very slow progress. 
There was no appearance, of any obstructions either 
from ice or land, and even the heavy swell which 
came down the inlet, driving the water repeatedly in 
at the stern-windows, was hailed as an indication of 
open sea to the westward. 

On the 8d of August an easterly breeze sprung up, 
carrying both vessels rapidly forward. A crowd of 
sail was set, and they pushed triumphantly to the 
westward. Their minds were filled with anxious hope 
and suspense. The mast-heads were crowded with 
officers and men, and the successive reports brought 
down from the topmast pinnacle were eagerly listened 
to. They passed various headlands with several wide 
openings towards the north and south, but these it 
was not their present object to explore. The wind, 



HOPES AND DISAPPOESTTMENTS. 153 

freslieiiing more and more carried them happily for- 
ward, till at midnight they found themselves a hun- 
dred and fifty miles from the mouth of the grand in- 
let, which still retained a breadth of fifty miles. The 
success of the expedition they hoped was now to a 
great extent decided. 

The ships proceeded on and found two other inlets, 
then a bold cape named Fellfoot, forming apparently 
the termination of this long line of coast. The length- 
ened swell which still rolled in from the north and 
west, with the oceanic color of the waters, inspired 
the hope that they had already j)assed the region of 
straits and inlets, and were now wafted along the 
wide expanse of the Polar basin. ISTothing, it was 
supposed, would now obstruct their progress to 
Icy Cape, the western boundary of America. An 
alarm of land was given, but it proved to be only 
from an island of no great extent ; more land was 
soon discovered beyond Cape Fellfoot, which was 
ascertained to be the headland to a noble bay extend- 
ing on their right, which they named Maxwell Bay. 

An uninterrupted "range of sea still stretched out 
before them, though they saw on the south a line of 
continuous ice. Some distance onward they discover- 
ed, with deep dismay, that this ice was joined to impene- 
trable floes, which completely crossed the channel 
and joined the western point of Maxwell Bay. A vio- 
lent surf was beating along the edges, and they drew 
back to avoid entanglement in the ice 

The officers began to amuse themselves with fruit- 
less attempts to catch white whales, when the weather 
cleared, and they saw to the south an open sea with a 
dark water-sky. Parry, hoping that it might lead 
to a free passage in a lower latitude, steered toward 



154 DREARY SHORES. 

it, and found himself at tlie moutli of a great 
inlet, ten leagues broad, with no visible termination ; 
to tlie two capes at its entrance lie gave tlie names 
of Clarence and Seppings. 

Finding tlie western shore of tliis inlet deeply en- 
cumbered with ice, they moved across to the eastern 
where was a broad and open channel. The coast 
was the most dreary and desolate they had ever be- 
held even in the Arctic world, j)i'esenting scarcely a 
semblance either of animal or vegetable life. Navi- 
gation was rendered more arduous from the irregular- 
ity of the compass. 

After sailing a hundred and twenty miles up this 
inlet, the increasing width of which inspired them 
with corresj^onding hopes, with extreme consternation 
they suddenly perceived the ice to diverge from its 
parallel course, close in and run to a point of land which 
appeared to form the southern extremity of the 
eastern shore. The western horizon also appeared 
covered with heavy and extensive floes, a bright and 
dazzling ice-blink extending from shore to shore. 
Parry now determined to return to the old station, 
and watch the opportunity w^hen the relenting ice 
would allow the ships to proceed Avestward. 

On the 18th, after getting once more close to the 
northern shore the navigators began to make a little 
progress, when some showers of rain, accompanied with 
heavy Avind, produced such an effect that on tlie 21st 
the Avhole ice had disapjieared ; they could scarcely 
believe it to be the same sea which had just before 
been covered ^vith floes as far as the eye could reach. 

Parry mnv cro^N-dcnl all sail to the westward and 
passed Beechy Island ; after which he reached a ^ne 
and broad inlet leading to the north, Avhich he named 



THE liEWAKD EAKNED. 155 

Wellington. Tlie sea up tliis inlet being perfectly- 
open lie would have ascended it, liad there not been 
before him an open channel leading due west. 

A favorable breeze now" sprung up, and the adven- 
turers passed gayly and triumphantly along the shores 
of Cornwallis Island and two smaller ones. The nav- 
igation then became extremely difficult in consequence 
of thick fogs, which not only froze on the shrouds 
but, as the compass was useless, took away all means 
of knowing the direction in which they sailed. They 
were obliged to trust to the land and ice preserving 
the same line, and sometimes employed the most odd 
expedients for ascertaining the j)recise point. 

Pushing westward through many obstacles they at 
length reached the coast of an island larger than any 
before discovered, to which they gave the name of 
Melville. The wind now failed, and they slowly 
moved forward by towing and warping, till, on the 
4th of September, Parry announced to his joyful crew, 
that, having reached the longitude of 110^ W., they 
had become entitled to the reward of £5000 prom- 
ised by Parliament to the first crew who should attain 
that meridian. 

The mariners pushed forward with redoubled ardor, 
but soon found their course arrested by an impene- 
trable icy barrier. They waited nearly a fortnight in 
hopes of overcoming it, when the young ice began 
rapidly to form on the surface of the waters, and 
Parry was convinced that in the event of a single 
hour's calm he would be frozen up in the midst of 
the sea. 'No option w^as therefore left but to return 
to a harbor which had been passed on Melville Island. 
It was reached on the 24th, but they were obliged to 
cut two miles through a large fioe with which it was 



156 THE NORTH GEORGIAN THEATRE. 

filled. On tlie 26tli, tlie ships were anchored at about 
a cable's length from tlie beacli, and soon frozen in. 

Tlie commander, finding himself and his ships shut 
in for a long and dreary winter, devoted his attention, 
with judicious activity and a mixture of firmness and 
kindness, to mitigate those evils Avhich even in lower 
latitudes had often rendered an Arctic wintering so 
fatal. It was necessary to be very economical of fuel, 
the small quantity of moss and turf which could be 
collected being too wet to be of any use. 

Parry's plans for keeping the men's minds in a live- 
ly and cheerful state were original, and proved effect- 
ive. Arrangements were made for the occasional per- 
formance of a play, in a region veiy remote certainly 
from any to which the drama appeared congenial. 
Beechy Avas nominated stage-manager, and the officers 
came forward as amateur performers. The very ex- 
pectation thus raised among the seamen, and the bus- 
tle of prepanng a room for the purpose, Avere extreme- 
ly salutary ; and Avhen the Korth Georgian theatre 
opened an ith " Miss in her Teens," the hardy tars Avere 
couA^ulsed A\'itli laui]cliter. 

Tlie officers had another source of amusement in 
tlie North Georgia Gazette, of Avhich Captain Sabine 
became editor, and all A\'ere iuAdted to contiibute to 
this chronicle of the frozen regions. Ea^cu those Avho 
hesitated to appear as Avriters, enliA^ened the circle by 
Severe but good-humored criticisms. 

" Thus passed the time 
Till, througli the lucid chambers of the South, 
Looked out the joyous Sun." 

It was on the 4th of November that this great orb 
ought to have taken his leave ; but a deep haze pre- 




TRACK CF THE HECLA AND GRIPER. 




PARRY S SHIPS IN WINTER QUARTERS. 



WINTER AMUSEMENTS. 159 

vented tliem from bidding a formal farewell Amid 
various occupations and amusements tlie shortest day 
came on almost unexpected, and the seamen then 
watched with pleasure the midday twilight gradually 
strengthening. On the 3d of February the sun was 
again seen from the maintop of the Hecla. Through 
the greatest depth of the Polar night, the officers, dur- 
ing the brief twilight, had taken a regular walk of 
two or three hours, although never longer than 
a mile lest they should be overtaken by snow-drift. 
There was a want of objects to diversify this walk. 
A dreary monotonous surface of dazzling white cover- 
ed land and sea : the view of the ships, the smoke as- 
cending from them, and the sound of human voices, 
which through the calm and cold air was carried to 
an extraordinary distance, alone gave any animation to 
this wintry scene. 

The officers, however, persevered in their daily 
walk, and exercise was also enforced upon the men, 
who, even when prevented by the weather from leav- 
ing the vessel, were made to run round the deck, 
keeping time to the tune of an organ. This move- 
ment they did not at first entirely relish ; but no plea 
against it being admitted, they converted it at last 
into matter of frolic. By these means health was 
maintained on board the ships to a surprising degree, 
although several of the crew had symptoms of 
scurvy as early as January. 

Further on in the season other cases of scurvy oc- 
curred, which were aggravated by an accident. As 
the men were taking their musical perambulation 
round the deck, a house erected on shore and contain- 
ing a number of the most valuable instruments was 
seen to be on fire. The crew instantly ran, pulled off 



160 fire! fire! 

tlie roof witli ropes, knocked d<5wn a part of tke sides, 
and being tlius enabled to throw in large quantities 
of snow succeeded in subduing the flames. But their 
faces now presented a curious spectacle ; every nose 
and cheek was white with frost-bites, and had to be 
rubbed with snow to restore circulation. No less 
than sixteen were added to the sick-list in conse- 
quence of this fire. 

The animal tribes disappeared early in the winter 
from this frozen region, and there remained only a 
pack of wolves, which serenaded the ship nightly, not 
venturing to attack, but contriving to avoid being 
captured. A beautiful white fox was caught and 
made a pet of. 

On the 16th of March the North Georgian theatre 
was closed with an appropriate address, and the gene- 
ral attention was now turned to the means of extrica- 
tion from the ice. By the l7th of May the seamen 
had so far cut the ice from around the ships as to 
allow them to float ; but in the sea it was still immova- 
ble. This interval of inaction was employed by Cap- 
tain Parry in an excursion across Melville Island. The 
ground was still mostly covered with softened snow, 
and even the cleared tracts were extremely desolate, 
though checkered by intervals of fine verdure. Deer 
were seen traversing the plains in considerable num- 
bers. To the north appeared another island to which 
was given the name of Sabine. 

By the middle of June pools were every where 
formed ; the dissolved water flowed in streams and 
even in torrents, which rendered hunting and travel- 
ing unsafe. There were also channels of water in 
which boats could pass ; yet throughout June and 
July the great covering of ice in the surrounding sea 



A BREAK-UP. 161 

remained entire, and kept the ships in harbor. On 
the 2d of August, however, the whole mass broke up 
and floated out; and the explorers had now open 
water in which to prosecute their discovery. 

On the 4th of August they reached the same spot 
where their progress had been formerly arrested. On 
the 15th they were enabled to make a certain pro- 
gress; after which the frozen surface of the ocean 
assumed a more compact and impenetrable aspect 
than had ever before been witnessed. The officers 
ascended some of the lofty heights which bordered 
the coast ; but in a long reach of sea to the westward 
no boundary was seen to these icy barriers. There 
appeared only the western extremity of Melville 
Island, named Cape Dundas ; and in the distance a 
bold high coast, which they named Banks Land. 

As even a brisk easterly gale did not produce the 
slightest movement in this frozen surface, they were 
led to believe that on the other side there must be a 
large barrier of land, by which it was held in a fixed 
state. On considering all circumstances, there ap- 
peared no alternative but to make their way home- 
ward while yet the season permitted. 

Lancaster Sound was left behind on the 1st of 
September. Passing down the west shore of Baffin's 
Bay, they stopped at Clyde's Kiver, where they re- 
ceived visits from a tribe of Esquimaux, whose appear- 
ance and conduct pleased them all very much — lively, 
good-natured, and cheerful, with a great inclination 
to jump about when much pleased, ''rendering it," 
says Parry, " a penalty of no trifling nature for them 
to sit still for half an hour together." They were 
decently clothed, male and female, and their children 
equally so, in well dressed and neatly-sewn seal skins. 



162 



A SUCCESSFUL EXPEDITION. 



Parry's arrival in Britian was liailed witli tlie high- 
est exultation. To have sailed upwards of thirty- 
degrees of longitude beyond the point reached by any 
former navigator^ — to have discovered so many new 
lands, islands, and bays, — to have established the 
much-contested existence of a Polar sea north of 
America, — finally, after a wintering of eleven months, 
to have brought back all his crew except one man in 
a sound condition, — were enough to raise his name 
above that of any former Arctic voyager. 




CHAPTER XII. 
CEUISE OF THE FUHY AND HECLA. 

(PAERY LYOK.) 

No hesitation was felt in England as to sending 
out another expedition under Parry ; and the two 
ships Fury and Hecla, of nearly the same size, sailed 
on the 8th of May, 1821. Captain George F. Lyon, 
already distinguished for his services in Africa, com- 
manded the Hecla. 

The ships arrived at the mouth of Hudson's Straits 
on the 2d of July, where the mariners were struck 
with the dreary and gloomy aspect of the shores. 
They were soon surrounded with bergs and floes, and 
had much trouble in reaching Hudson's Bay. Amid 
these delays the sailors were amused by the sight of 
three companion ships — ^two belonging to the Hudson's 
Bay Company, and one bringing out settlers for Lord 
Selkirk's colony. These last, who were chiefly Dutch 
and Germans, were seen waltzing on deck often for 
hours together and were only driven in by a severe 
fall of snow. Although almost in despair, they recre- 
ated themselves from time to time by matrimonial 
arrangements, in which they were so diligent, that it 
is said there was scarcely a ball which did not end in 
a marriage. 

163 



164 THE SAVAGE-ISLANDERS. 

One day, when near the Savage Islands a loud 
shouting was heard, and soon after a number of natives 
were seen paddling their canoes through the lanes of 
open water, or drawing them over the pieces of ice. 
Among a great number of kayaks were five oomiaks, 
or women's boats. Presently a Avild and noisy scene 
of frolic and traffic began. The natives traded with 
eagerness, even stripping themselves of the furs which 
formed their clothing, and raised shouts of triumph 
when they obtained in exchange for them a nail, a 
saw, or a razor. Their aspect was wild and their 
.character seemed fierce and savage. Some of the 
ancient dames were pronounced to be most hideous 
objects. The children were rather pretty; though, 
from being thrown carelessly into the bottom of the 
boats, they had much the appearance of young wild 
animals. Besides traffic, the natives indulged in a 
great deal of rude frolic ; one of them got behind a 
sailor, shouted loudly in one ear and gave him a 
hearty box on the other, which was hailed with a 
general laugh. They also carried on a dance, consist- 
ing chiefly of violent leaping and stamping, though 
in tolerable time. 

After reaching Southampton Island, Parry sailed 
Tip Fox's Channel and passing around the north of 
the island came to Repulse Bay, where he ascertained 
that it was as Middleton had described it, without a 
western outlet. Its shores were far from uninviting ; 
the surrounding land arose a thousand feet, and veg- 
etation was very luxuriant. The remains of sixty 
Esquimaux habitations were foimd, consisting of stones 
laid one over the other, in circles, eight or nine feet 
in diameter ; besides about a hundred artificial struct- 
ures, fire-places, store-houses, and other walled enclos- 



THIEVINO KATIVl].;. 1 35 

tires four or iive feet high, lujed for keeping their 
skin canoes from being gnawed hj the dogs. 

Leaving Eepulse Bay and sailing eastward, the 
explorei's soon found themselves among numerous 
islands which formed a complete labyrinth of various 
shapes and sizes, while strong currents setting between 
them in various directions, amid fogs and drifting ice, 
rendered the navigation truly perilous. The Fury 
was assailed by successive masses rushing out from 
an inlet ; her anchor was dragged along the rocks with 
a grinding noise, and on being drawn up, the two 
flukes were found to be broken off. A channel was 
at last found, by which the mariners made their way 
through this perilous maze, and found themselves in 
Fox's Channel, which they had left a month before. 

Starting northward again they discovered several 
inlets, one of which they named after Captain Lyon. 
A party of Esquimaux were encountered, whose timid- 
ity was overcome by the hope of obtaining some iron 
tools. In the course of this transaction, the curiosity 
of the crew was roused by the conduct of a woman, 
who had sold one boot, but obstinately retained the 
other in disregard of the strongest remonstrances as 
to the ridiculous figure she made. At length suspi- 
cion rose to such a pitch, that, setting aside all court- 
esy, they seized her and pulled off the boot, in which 
was found two spoons and a pewter plate which she 
had stolen. 

The end of September now approached, and Parry 
found himself suddenly in the depth of winter ; soft 
or pancake ice began to form and rapidly increased 
till the vessel became, like Gulliver bound by the 
feeble hands of Lilliputians. At the same time the 
drift-ice became cemented into one great and threat- 

10 



16G 

ening field. Tlie navigators could no longer even at- 
tempt to reach the land, but determined to saw into 
an adjoining floe, and there take up their winter quar- 
ters. This work was not laborious, but far from 
pleasant, as the ice bent like leather beneath them. 

The ships were now frozen in, and measures were 
taken to preserve health and comfort during the 
dreary winter before them. The Polar Theatre was 
opened in November with " The Rivals." Parry and 
Lyon volunteered to appear as Sir Anthony and Cap- 
tain Absolute ; while the ladies generously removed 
an ample gro^vth of beard, disregarding the comforta- 
ble warmth which it afforded in an Arctic climate. 
The company were well received, and carried through 
their performances with unabated spirit. Evening 
schools were also established in both ships — the 
clerk of the Fury and a seaman of the Hecla act- 
ing as schoolmasters. Twenty men of each ship 
passed two hours every evening in these exercises, 
and made considerable progress in their studies. 

Amid these varied and pleasing occupations the 
shortest day passed over their heads almost unobserved, 
especially as the sun never entirely left them. On 
Christmas-day divine service was performed on board 
the Fury and attended by the men of both ships. 
The sailors were regaled with fresh beef, cranberry 
pies, and grog, and became so extremely elevated, that 
they insisted on successively drinking, with three 
hearty cheers, the health of each officer. 

The winter months were enlivened by various beau- 
tiful appearances which the sky at times presented. 
Those singular and beautiful streams of light, called 
the Aurora JBoreaUs, or Northern Lights, keep up an 
almost incessant illumination. The light had a ten- 



U ^T^^ ,rT>T^T^xr ^ * ^T^v:,oo " 



THE MERRY DANCERS. 169 

dency to form an irregular arch, which, in calm 
weather, was often very distinct, though its upper 
boundary was seldom well-defined; but, whenever 
the air became agitated, showers of rays spread in 
every direction with the brilliancy and rapidity of 
lightning. No rule, however, could be traced in the 
movement of those lighter parcels called " the merry 
dancers," which flew about perpetually in every 
direction and towards every quarter. In stormy 
weather the Northern Lights always became more rapid 
in their motions, sharing all the wildness of the blast. 
They gave an indescribable air of magic to the whole 
scene, and made it not wonderful, that by the untaught 
Indian they should be viewed as "the spirits of his 
fathers roaming through the land of souls." 

On the morning of the 1st of February a number 
of distant figures were seen moving over the ice, and 
when they were viewed through glasses, the cry was 
raised, " Esquimaux ! Esquimaux !" As it was of 
great importance to deal courteously and discreetly 
with these strangers, the two commanders formed a 
party of six, who walked in files behind each other 
that they might cause no alarm. The Esquimaux 
then formed themselves into a line of twenty-one, 
advanced slowly, and at length made a full stop. In 
this order they saluted the strangers by the usual 
movement of beating their breasts. They were sub- 
stantially clothed in rich and dark deer-skins, and 
appeared a much more quiet and orderly race than 
their rude countrymen of the Savage Islands. They 
had pieces of whalebone in their hands which they 
had brought hither as a peace offering or for barter ; 
in exchange for them they were given some nails and 
beads. Some of the women who had handsome furs 



170 ESQUIMAUX NEIGHBOES DISCOVERED. 

on whicli attracted attention, began to strip tliem off, 
to tlie great consternation of tlie Englisli — as the tem- 
perature was far below zero — who were consoled on 
finding that tliey had on complete double suits. 

The Esquimaux then by signs invited the English 
to accompany them to their habitations, which were 
only two miles from the ships, but had not, strange 
to say, been before discovered, although there was a 
settlement of five houses and sixty people with their 
canoes, sledges and dogs. The huts were made en- 
tirely of snow and ice, with ice windows at the top to 
admit light ; entrance was effected by creeping through 
low passages with arched doors ; the roofs were per- 
fect arched domes, and from a circular apartment in 
the centre, arched doorways connected with three 
other rooms. 

The interior of these mansions presented a scene 
novel and interesting. The ^vomen were seated on 
the beds at the sides, each one having a little fire- 
place, or lamp, with domestic utensils around her. 
The children crept behind their mothers, and the dogs, 
excepting those on the beds, slunk out doors in dis- 
may. Outside, the village appeared like a cluster of 
hillocks, but successive falls of snow filled up the 
spaces between the huts and made the surface nearly 
level, so that the children j)layed on the roofs, and as 
summer advanced occasionally thrust through them a 
leg or a foot. 

After a cheerful and friendly visit, an invitation 
was given to the Esquimaux to repair to the ships, 
when fifty accepted it. Partly walking and partly 
dancing they quickly reached the vessels, where a strik- 
ing congeniality of spirit was soon found to exist be- 
tween them and the sailors — boisterous fun forming 



ASTONISHING THE NATIVES. l7l 

to eacli tlie cMef source of enjoyment. A fiddle and 
drum being produced, the natives struck up a dance, 
or rather a succession of vehement leaps, accompanied 
with loud shouts and yells. Seeing the Kabloonas or 
Whites, as they called the strangers, engaged in the 
game of leap-frog, they attempted to join ; but not 
duly understanding how to measure their movements, 
they made such over-leaps as sometimes to come down 
on the crown of their heads. Their attention was 
specially attracted to the effects of a winch, by which* 
one sailor forcibly drew towards him a party of ten 
or twelve of their number, though grinning and strain- 
ing every nerve in resistance ; but finding all in vain, 
they joined in the burst of good-humored laughter till 
tears streamed from their eyes. 

One intelligent old man followed Lyon to the cabin, 
and viewed with rational surprise various objects 
which were presented. The performance of a hand- 
organ and a musical snuff-box struck him with breath- 
less admiration ; and on seeing drawings of the Esqui^ 
maux in Hudson's Strait, he soon understood them 
and showed the difference between their dress and ap- 
pearance and that of his own tribe. On seeing the 
sketch of a bear, he raised a loud cry, drew up his 
sleeves, and showed the scars of three deep wounds 
received in encounters with that terrible animal. The 
seamen sought to treat their visitors to such delicacies 
as the ship afforded, but were for some time at a loss 
to discover how their palate might be gratified. Grog, 
the seaman's choicest luxury, only one old woman 
could be induced to taste. Sugar, sweetmeats, gin- 
gerbread, were eaten from politeness but with evident 
disgust ; but oil and anything consisting of fat or 
grease, was swallowed in immense quantities, and 



172 ASTONISHING THE NATIVES. 

witli symptoms of exquisite cleliglit. An old woman, 
wlio sold her oil-pot, took care to swallow its contents 
aud lick it clean with her tongue before parting with 
it. Captain Lyon, being disposed to ingratiate him- 
self with a rather handsome young damsel, presented 
her with a candle ; she ate the tallow with e very- 
symptom of enjoyment, and then thrust the wick into 
her mouth. 

A large pack of wolves remained in the vicinity 
through the whole winter, in eager watch for any vic- 
tim which might come within their reach. They took 
a station between the huts and the ships, ready to act 
against either as circumstances might dictate. They 
did not attack the sailors even when unarmed, though 
they were often seen hovering through the gloom in 
search of prey. Every stray dog was seized, and when 
extremely hungry they devoured the cables and can- 
vas as opportunity offered. A deadly war was there- 
fore waged against them by the sailors, and many 
were killed and given to the Esquimaux. 

As spring advanced, the attention of the officers 
was almost wholly engrossed by the prospect of navi- 
gation and discovery during the approaching summer. 
Their Esquimaux neighbors accustomed to move from 
place to place, were found to have an extensive knowl- 
edge of the seas and coasts. One woman, named 
Iligliuk, called by her people " the wise woman," was, 
after a little instruction, enabled to convey to the 
strangers the outlines of her geographical knowledge 
in the foim of a rude map. 

Captain Lyon, in the middle of March, undertook a 
journey across a piece of liuul lying south of the ships, 
which had been named Winter Island. The party 
were scarcely gone when they encountered a heavy 



AN EXCUESIOE". 173 

gale, bringing witli it clouds of drifted snow and in- 
tense cold. They dug a cave in the snow, and by 
huddling together round a fire to which no vent was 
allowed, contrived to keep up a degree of warmth. 
In the morning their sledge was too deeply buried 
beneath the drift to leave any hope of digging it out, 
and they started for the ships, now six miles distant, 
with snow falling so thick that they could not see a 
yard before them. 

They were soon bewildered, and wandered they 
knew not where among heavy hummocks of ice ; some 
began to sink into that insensibility which is the pre- 
lude to death by cold, and to reel about like drunken 
men. After resigning almost every hope of deliver- 
ance they providentially reached the ships, where 
their arrival caused indescribable joy, as they had 
been given up for lost, while no party could be sent 
in search of them without imminent risk of sharing 
their fate. 

In May, Captain Lyon undertook another journey. 
He crossed Winter Island, and also the frozen strait 
separating it from the continent. He then proceeded 
some distance along the coast, crossing several bays 
upon the ice, and at last came in view of a bold cape, 
which he vainly hoped was the extreme western point 
of America. Here the party were overtaken by a 
storm of snow, which kept them imprisoned in their 
tents for sixty-eight hours, which dreary interval they 
enlivened by reading in turn from three books they 
chanced to have with them ; as soon as the sun began 
to shine they hastened back to the ships. 

The end of May presented a gloomy aspect, the sea- 
son being more backward than it had been in the 
higher latitude of Melville Island. The snow was 



174 A FIGHT WITH WALRUS. 

dissolved only in spots, and hardly any symptoms of 
vegetation were visible ; but as there was an expanse 
of open water in the sea without, Captain Parry de- 
termined upon sawing his way through to it. This 
was a most laborious process, and after the seamen 
had continued at it more than a fortnight, and were 
within forty-eight hours of completing a canal, the 
body of the ice made a movement Avhich closed it en- 
tirely up. Another passage opened, and then closed, 
but at last open water was reached, and the ships sail- 
ed on the 2d of July. 

The shores now began to put on their summer as- 
pect; the snow had nearly disappeared, and the 
ground was covered with the richest bloom of Arctic 
vegetation. The explorers came to a fine river named 
Bari'ow, which formed a most picturesque fall down 
rocks richly fringed with very brilliant plants. Here 
the reindeer sporting, the eider-duck, the golden plover, 
and the snow-bunting, spreading their wings, pro- 
duced a gay and delightful scene. On the 14th they 
reached the island of Amitioke, where they saw about 
two hundred walruses lying piled over each other on 
the loose drift-ice. A boat's crew from each ship pro- 
ceeded to the attack; but these gallant amphibia, 
some with their cubs mounted on their backs, made 
the most desperate resistance ; three only were killed. 

They now proceeded northward, and saw before 
them a bold and higli range of coast, separated ap- 
parently from that ah^ng which they were sailing. 
This feature agreeing with the map drawn by the 
fair Iligliuk, flattered them that they were approach- 
ing the strait exhibited by her as forming the entrance 
into the Polar basin. They pushed on full of hope 
and animation, and were farther cheered by i^eaching 



STOPPED BY ICE. 175 

tlie small island of Igloolik, wLicli she liad described 
as situated at the commencement of the passage. 
They soon saw the strait stretching westward before 
them in long perspective ; but, alas ! they discovered 
at the same moment an unbroken sheet of ice from 
shore to shore, crossing and blocking up the passage ; 
and this not a loose accidental floe, but the ice of the 
preceding winter, on which the midsummer sun had 
not produced the slightest change. 

Unable to advance a single step, they amused them- 
selves with land excursions in different directions ; and 
Captain Parry undertook, on the 14th of August, with 
a party of six, an expedition along the frozen surface 
of the strait. The journey was very laborious, the 
ice being sometimes thrown up in rugged hummocks, 
and occasionally leaving large spaces of open water, 
which it was necessary to cross on a plank, or on 
pieces of ice instead of boats. In four days they came 
in view of a peninsula terminated by a bold cape, the 
approach to which was guarded by successive ranges 
of strata, resembling the tiers or galleries of a high 
and commanding fortification. The party scrambled 
to the summit, whence they enjoyed a most gratifying 
spectacle. They were at the narrowest part of the 
strait, here about two miles across, and a tide or cur- 
rent was running through it at the rate of two miles 
an hour. "Westward the shores on each side receded, 
till, for three points of the compass and amid a clear 
horizon no land was visible. The captain doubted 
not that from this position he beheld the Polar sea ; 
and hoped notwithstanding the formidable barriers of 
ice which intervened to force his way into it. He 
named this the Strait of the Fury and Hecla, and gave 
the sailors an extra can of grog, to drink a safe and 
speedy passage through its channel 



176 AGAIN FROZEN IX. 

f 

Parry now lost no time in returning to the sliips, 
where liis arrival was seasonable, for the opposing bar- 
rier which had been gradually softening and craclcing, 
at once almost entirely disappeared. On the- 21st the 
ships got under way ; and, though retarded by fogs 
and other obstructions, arrived on the 26th at that 
narrowest channel which the commander had formerly 
reached. A bnsk breeze now sprang up, the sky 
cleared, they dashed across a current of three or four 
knots an hour, and sanguinely expected entire success. 
Suddenly, from the crow's nest above, it was an- 
nounced that ice filled the channel. In an hour they 
reached this barrier, and finding it soft, spread all 
their canvas and forced their way into it a distance 
when they were stopped. From this point, during 
the whole season, the ships were unable to advance. 

Captain Lyon undertook an expedition southward, 
to ascertain if any inlet or passage from sea to sea in 
this direction had escaped notice. The country was 
so filled with high rocky hills, and with chains of 
lakes in which much ice was floating, that he could 
not proceed above seven miles. Though it was the 
begiiming of September, the season was only that of 
early spring. Another excursion was made by a 
party who penetrated sixty miles westward along the 
southern coast of Cockburn Island, till they reached 
a pinnacle, whence they saw the Polar ocean spread- 
ing before them ; but tremendous barriers of ice filled 
the strait, and precluded all approach. 

It was now the middle of September, and the usual 
symj)toms of deer trooping in herds southward, float- 
ing pieces of ice consolidating into masses, and the 
thin crust forming on the surface of the waters, re- 
minded the mariners not only that they could hope 



A CHEEKING- SPECTACLE. l77 

for no farther removal of the obstacles ^vliicli arrested 
their progress, but that they must lose no time in pro- 
viding winter-quarters. The middle of the strait, at 
the spot where they had been first stopped, was a fav- 
orable station for future discovery ; but prudence sug- 
gested a doubt whether the ships enclosed in this icy 
prison coidd ever be released. 

On the 30th of October, by the usual operation of 
sawing, the ships were established in a harbor at 
Igloolik. The ensuing season was passed with the 
most careful attention to the health and comfort of 
the crews ; but though their spirits did not sink, there 
appears to have been on the whole, less gayety and 
lightness of heart than in the two former winterings, 
and the drama and school were not revived. On the 
5th of January 1823, the horizon was so brightly suf- 
fused with red, that they hoped to see the sun ; but a 
fortnight of thick fog occasioned a disappointment. 
On the 19th, the sky having cleared, they saw it rise 
attended by two parhelia, and both crews turned out 
to enjoy the novelty and splendor of this cheering 
spectacle. 

The sailors found at Igloolik a colony of Esqui- 
maux, who received them at first with surprise and 
some degree of alarm ; but on learning they were from 
Winter Island and intimate with its tenants of last 
season, they hailed them at once as familiar acquaint- 
ances. These natives belonged to the same tribe, and 
were connected by alliance and close relationship with 
many individuals of the Winter Island party, of 
whom, therefore, they were delighted to receive tid- 
ings. The crews spent the winter with them on quite 
a friendly footing, and rendered important services to 
them during a period of severe sickness. 



178 THE FAIR ESQUIMAUX. 

The navigators were received witli the most cordial 
hospitality into the little huts, where the best meat 
was set before them, and the women vied with each 
other in the attentions of cooking, drying and mend- 
ing their clothes. " The women working and singing, 
their husbands quietly mending their lines, the chil- 
dren playing before the door, and the pot boiling over 
the blaze of a cheerful lamp," gave a pleasing picture 
of savage life. Yet a continued intercourse showed 
that the Esquimaux inherited their full share of human 
frailty. The fair Esquimaux are charged with a strong 
propensity to slander, which Avas natural to them as 
they sat in circles round the door mending their lines. 
Their own conduct, meantime, is said to have aiforded 
ample scope for censure, especially in regard to con- 
nubial fidelity. 

The principal deity of these people was Aywillai- 
yoo, a female, immensely tall, with only the left eye, 
and wearing a pigtail reaching to her knee. Lyon 
witnessed a mighty incantation, in which Toolemak, 
the chief magician, summoned Aywillaiyoo to the 
upper world to utter her oracles. The party were 
assembled in a hut, where light after light was put 
out till they were left in total darkness. Toolemak 
then, after loud invocations, professed to descend to 
the world below to bring up the goddess. Soon there 
arose a low chant of peculiar sound, imagined to be 
the voice of Aywillaiyoo. During half an hour, in 
reply to the loud screams and questions of her votaries, 
she uttered dubious and mystical responses ; after 
which the sound died away, and she was suj^posed to 
descend beneath the earth; then Toolemak with a 
shout announced his own return to the upper world. 

The natives believe also in a future world, the em- 



AN ESQUIMAUX MAGICIAI^. 179 

ployments and pleasures of wliicli, according to tlie 
usual creed of savage races, are all sensual. The soul 
descends beneath the earth through successive abodes, 
the first of which has somewhat of the nature of pur- 
gatory ; but the good spirits passing through it find 
the other mansions successively improve, till they 
reach that of perfect bliss, far beneath, where the sun 
never sets, and where, by the side of large lakes that 
never freeze, the deer roam in vast herds and the 
seal and walrus always abound in the waters. 

One of the Esquimaux having lost his wife, as it 
was very difiicult to dig a grave, the sailors piled over 
her a heap of stones to protect her from wild animals. 
The man gave thanks, but not cordially ; he even ex- 
pressed a dread lest the weight would be painfully 
felt by his deceased spouse ; and soon after, when an 
infant died, he declared her wholly incapable of bear- 
ing such a burden and would allow nothing but snow 
to be laid over her. 

The spring proved singularly backward, and it was 
the 7th of August before they were able, by hard saw- 
ing, to reach the open sea ; by which time hope of 
effecting any thing important during that season was 
relinquished. The voyage homeward was soon after- 
ward commenced, and the explorers reached England 
in October. As nothing had been heard of them 
during their two years' absence, they were viewed 
almost as men risen from the dead. The bells of Ler- 
wick were rung, and other extraordinary demonstra- 
tions of joy made on their arrival. 

A third expedition under Parry sailed from Eng- 
land on the 19th of May, 1824. It consisted of the 
two ships with which he had made his last voyage — 
the Hecla and Fury, the latter being commanded 



180 paery's third expedition 

by Capt. H. P. Hoppner, who had already made several 
voyages with Parry. It was not till the 10th of Sept. 
that they were able to enter Lancaster Sound, and 
on the 1st of October they anchored for the winter at 
Port Bowen in Prince Regent's Inlet. 

As the amusements of former winters had been 
worn threadbare, masquerades were started and kept 
up monthly throughout the winter. Schools also 
were opened and continued with much benefit to the 
scholars. 

On the 19th of July, by sawing through the ice the 
navigators reached open water and proceeded down 
the inlet, which was filled with fragments of ice, mak- 
ing navigation dangerous. Subsequently they drifted 
with the ice till the ships lay close to the shore, over 
which towered high perpendicular cliifs, fragments 
from which were constantly falling. 

About the first of August a gale came on, which 
drove the ice against the ships so that they became 
unmanageable, and were carried along with great 
speed and grounded on the icy beach. Both vessels 
were severely nipped, but got off with high water. 

On the 21st the Fury was again forced on shore, 
and as it was impossible to repair her she was aban- 
doned, and her crew went on board the Hecla. 
Years afterward the stores of the deserted ship 
served to comfort and sustain British sailors when in 
circumstances of great peril. 

The incessant labor and anxiety and the frequent 
imminent danger into which the Hecla was thrown 
in the attempts to save her comrade, continued for 
nearly a month, destroyed every chance of accomplish- 
ing the objects of the voyage; Parry therefore 
started for England where he arrived in October. 



CHAPTEE XIII. 
VOYAGE OF THE DOROTHEA AND TRENT. 

(bUCHAN FRAI^KLI]^.) 

The Englisli Expedition toward tlie Pole in 181 8^ 
referred to in Chapter IX, was commanded by Cap- 
tain David Buclian, wlio sailed in tlie Dorothea ; tlie 
other ship of the expedition, the Trent, was command- 
ed by Lt. John Franklin. Frederic Beechy, who pub- 
lished an account of the voyage, and George Back 
were officers on the latter vessel. 

The ships left England in April, their appointed 
place" of rendezvous in case of separation being Mag- 
dalena Bay, Spitzbergen. They reached Bear Island 
toward the close of May ; here the walrus were very 
numerous and were carefully studied. Their affec- 
tion for their young, their unflinching courage in de- 
fending them, and their conduct towards a wounded 
companion were remarkable. It was noticed in a 
fight with them, that when one was wounded others 
desisted from the attack and assisted their companion 
from the field of battle, swimming around him and 
holding him up with their tusks. 

Early in June the two ships anchored in Magdalena 
Bay, in the vicinity of numerous glaciers, the smallest 
of which, called the Hanging Iceberg, was two hundred 

181 



182 AN AVALANCHE. 

feet above the water on the slope of a mountain. So 
easily were large fragments of ice detached from these 
glaciers that silence became necessary. The firing 
of a gun rarely failed to be followed by an avalanche, 
and two of these witnessed by Beechy were on the 
most magnificent scale. An immense piece slid from 
a mountain into the bay, Avhere it disappeared, and 
nothing was seen but a violent commotion of the wa- 
ter and clouds of spray. On re-appearing it raised its 
head a hundred feet above the surface with water 
pouring down from all parts of it. When it became 
stationary it was measured and estimated to weigh 
421,660 tons. 

The avalanche in falling into the water, made such 
a commotion that the Dorothea, which was anchored 
four miles distant, was careened over and had to be 
set right by releasing the tackles. 

The explorers left this locality on the 7th of June, 
and sailing northward passed the north-western bound- 
ary of Spitzbergen. Beyond Red Bay they were stop- 
ped by the ice and remained imbedded in a floe for 
thirteen days, and afterward took shelter in Fair 
Haven. 

On the 6th of July the explorers again sailed north, 
but soon after encountered ice through which were 
channels of water. As the wind was favorable one of 
them was entered, but at evening it closed up and all 
attempts to get farther were in vain, as they were con- 
tinually drifted south with the ice. The highest lati- 
tude reached was 80^ 34 '. 

Having given this route a fair trial Buchan stai-ted 
toward the Greenland coast. While sailing along the 
edge of the ice a sudden gale arose, and to escape 
wreck the ships steered straight toward the pack, sur- 



A DANGEROUS POSITION. 183 

rounded by immens(5 pieces of ice. It was doubtful 
what tlie result would be wlien the ships reached the 
solid ice, but the crew preserved the greatest calmness 
and resolution. Beechy says : — " I will not conceal 
the pride I felt in witnessing the bold and decisive 
tone in which the orders were issued by the commander 
of our little vessel (Franklin), and the promptitude 
and steadiness with which they were executed by the 
crew. Each person instinctively secured his own hold 
and, with his eyes fixed upon the masts, awaited in 
breathless anxiety the moment of concussion. It soon 
arrived ; the brig, cutting her way through the light 
ice, came in violent contact with the main body. In 
an instant we all lost our footing, the masts bent with 
the impetus, and the cracking timbers from below be- 
spoke a pressure which was calculated to awaken our 
serious apprehensions. The ship's motion was so 
great that the bell, which in the heaviest gale of wind 
had never struck of itself, now tolled so continually 
that it was ordered to be muffled for the purpose of 
escaping the unpleasant associations it was calculated 
to produce." 

For a few hours the explorers remained fast in this 
tiying position ; then the gale ceased, and the pack 
broke up sufficiently to release the ships which were 
greatly damaged — the Dorothea being in a foundering 
condition. They made their way to Fair Haven, 
and after partially repairing the ships sailed for home 
where they arrived in October. This was Franklin's 
first Arctic voyage. 

11 



CHAPTER XIY. 

FRANKLIN'S LAND EXPEDITIONS TO THE 
SHORES OF THE POLAR SEA. 

The English Government having determined upon 
sending an Expedition from the shores of Hudson's 
Bay by land, to explore the northern coast of America 
from the mouth of the Coppermine River to the east- 
ward, Lieut. John Franklin was appointed its com- 
mander, and, with Surgeon John Richardson and 
Midshipmen George Back and Robert Hood, all of the 
Royal Navy, embarked on Sunday the 28d of May 
1819, at Gravsend, England, on board the ship Prince 
of Wales, belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company. 
The ship arrived at its destination, York Factory, on 
the western shores of Hudson's Bay, Aug. 30th, hav- 
ing narrowly escaped total wreck — being carried on 
to the rocky coast of Labrador in a dense fog, from 
which position she was extricated in a leaky condition. 

At this time a violent competition for the fur trade 
existed between tlie North-west and the Hudson's 
Bay Companies, which finally led to the extinction 
of the first named. The officers and employes of both 
companies were directed by the Government to ren- 
der the explorers every aid needed. Governor Wil- 
liams of the II. B. Co. received them at York Factory, 
and they Avere soon fitted out with a suitable boat, and 
a crew made up mostly fi-om the shi])'s company. On 

184 



185 

the 9 til of September, they began their journey by way 
of the rivers and lakes, to the mouth of the Copper- 
mine River, distant over fifteen hundred miles, on the 
shores of the Polar Sea. They were soon afterwards 
overtaken by boats of the Company. A portion of 
the following history of their travels is given in the 
words of Franklin and his companions. 

" We embarked at noon, and were honored with a 
salute of eight guns and three cheers from the Gov- 
ernor and all the inmates of the fort, assembled to 
witness our departure. We gratefully returned their 
cheers, and then made sail, much delighted at having 
now commenced our voyage into the interior of 
America. The wind and tide failing us at the dis- 
tance of six miles above the Factory, and the current 
being too rapid for using oars to advantage, the crew 
had to commence tracking, or dragging the boat by a 
line, to which they were harnessed. This operation is 
extremely laborious in these rivers. At sunset we 
landed, and pitched the tent for the night, having 
made a progress of twelve miles. A large fire was 
quickly kindled, supper speedily prepared, and as 
readily despatched, when we retired with our bufialo 
robes on, and enjoyed a night of sound repose. 

" On the morning of the 18 th, the country was clothed 
in the livery of winter, a heavy fall of snow having 
taken place during the night. It is not easy for any 
but an eye-witness to form an adequate idea of the ex- 
ertions of the Orkney boatmen in the navigation of 
this river. The necessity they were under of fi*e- 
quently jumping into the water, to lift the boats over 
the rocks, compels them to remain the whole day in 
wet clothes, at a season when the tempei'ature is far 
below the freezing point. The immense loads too, 



186 PERILS OF RIVER ICAVIGATIOIT. 

whicli tliey cany over the portages, is not more a mat- 
ter of surprise than the alacrity with which they per- 
form these laborious duties. 

" On the 2 2d, our route led us amongst many wooded 
islands, which lying in long vistas, j)roduced scenes of 
much beauty. In the course of the day we crossed the 
Upper Portage, surmounted the Devil's Landing Place, 
and urged the boats with poles through Groundwater 
Creek. At the upper end of this creek, our boAvman 
having given the boat too broad a sheer, to avoid the 
rock, it was caught on the broadside by the cui'- 
rent, and, in defiance of our utmost exertions, hurried 
down the rapid. Fortunately, however, it grounded 
against a rock high enough to prevent the current 
from oversetting it, and the crews of the other boats 
having come to our assistance, we succeeded, after 
several trials, in thro^ving a rope to them, with which 
they dragged our almost sinking vessel stern foremost 
up the stream, and rescued us from our perilous situ- 
ation. 

" The Painted Stone is a low rock, ten or twelve 
yards across, remai'kable for the marshy streams 
which arise on each side of it, taking different courses. 
On the one side, the water-course Avhich we have nav- 
igated from York Factory commences. On the other 
side of the stone the Echemamis arises. Having 
launched the boats over the rock, Ave commenced the 
descent of that river, and reached the mouth of the 
Saskatchawan at midnight, October 0th. 

" On the morning of the 20th Ave came to a party of 
Indians, encamped behind the bank of the river, on 
the >)orders of a small marshy lake. Here Ave were 
gratified with the ahcav of a A^ery large tent ; its coA^er- 
ing Avas moose deer leather, Avith apertures for the es- 



feakklin's first land expedition. 187 

cape of tlie smoke from the fires wliicli were placed at 
eacli end ; a ledge of wood was placed on tlie gromid 
on botli sides of the whole length of the tent, within 
which were the sleeping places, arranged probably ac- 
cording to families ; and the drums and other instru- 
ments of enchantment were piled up in the centre. 
Governor Williams gave a dram and a piece of tobacco 
to each of the males of the party." 

The travelers reached Cumberland Plouse, a trading 
post (originally built by Hearne) October 2 2d, and as 
winter was setting in, making travel by water imprac- 
ticable, made a long halt there. 

"After the 20th December the weather became cold, 
the thermometer constantly below zero. Christmas- 
day was particularly stormy ; but the gale did not 
prevent the full enjoyment of the festivities which are 
annually given at the Cumberland House on this day. 
All the men who had been despatched to different 
parts in search of provision or furs returned to the fort 
on the occasion, and were regaled with a substantial 
dinner and a dance in the evening. 

"The new year 1820 v^'as ushered in by repeated dis- 
charges of musketry ; a ceremony which has been ob- 
served by the men of both the trading Companies for 
many years. Our party dined with Mr. Connolly, and 
were regaled with a beaver, wdiich we found extreme- 
ly delicate. In the evening his men were entertained 
with a dance, in which the Canadians exhibited some 
grace and much agility ; and they contrived to infuse 
some portion of their activity and spirits into the steps 
of their female companions. The half-breed women 
are passionately fond of this amusement." 

On the 18th of January, Franklin, Back, and John 
Hepburn, a seaman, set out on snow shoes for a journey 



188 A wintee's joueney. 

to Fort Chipewyan, eight hundred and Mty-seveii 
miles to the north. They were provided with two 
carioles and two sledges, with their drivers and dogs. 
Being accompanied by Mr. Mackenzie, of the Hud- 
son's Bay Comj)any, who was going to Isle a la Crosse, 
with four sledges under his charge, they formed quite 
a procession, kee23ing in an Indian tile, in the track of 
the man who preceded the foremost dogs. 

The travelers rested occasionally at the trading posts 
which lay on their route. At Carlton House they 
were visited by the Stone Indians, who lived in that 
section and were famous for stealing everything 
they could find, particularly horses, which they 
maintained were common property sent by the Al- 
mighty for the general use of man. They kej)t in 
amity with their neighbors the Crees, from motives oi 
interest ; and the two tribes united in determined hos- 
tility against the nations dwelling to the westward, 
which were generally called Slave Indians — a term of 
reproach applied by the Crees to those tribes against 
whom they have waged successful wars. 

While at Carlton House, Franklin went six miles 
to visit a Cree encampment. The chiefs tent had been 
arranged for the occasion, fresh grass was spread on 
the ground, and buffalo robes were placed opposite 
the door to sit on ; and a kettle was on the fire to cook 
meat. The chief, an old man, welcomed him with a 
hearty shake of the hand and the customary salutation 
of "Wliat cheer?" 

" After a few minutes' conversation, an invitation 
was given to the cliief and his liunters to smoke the 
calumet with us, as a token of our friendship : this 
was loudly announced through the camp, and ten men 
from the other tents immediately joined our party. 



FEAIsKLIN S FIEST LAND EXPEDITION. 189 

On tlieir entrance tlie ^Yomen and children, whose pres- 
ence on sucli occasions is contrary to etiquette, withdrew. 
The calumet having been prepared and lighted by Mr. 
Pruden's clerk, was presented to the chief, who, on 
receiving it, performed the following ceremony before 
he commenced smoking : — He first pointed the stem 
to the south, then to the west, north, and east, and af- 
terwards to the heavens, the earth, and the fire, as an 
offering to the presiding spirits ; — he took three whiffs 
only, and then passed the pipe to his next companion, 
who took the same number of whiifs, and so did each 
person as it went round." 

The Crees catch buffalo by driving them into a 
large enclosure or pound ; they also hunt them on 
horseback ; and when the creatures are very shy they 
cra^^d towards them disguised in the skins of the wolf 
— an animal with which the buffalo are familiar, and, 
when in herds, not afraid of. 

At their departure from one trading post the trav- 
elers were much amused by a salute of musketry fired 
by half-breed women — the men being all absent. At 
another place a dance was given in their honor. On 
the 26th of March they reached Fort Chipewyan, and 
there halted for their companions who were to come 
on with the boats after navigation opened. 

Dr. Eichardson, who with Mr. Hood passed the 
mnter at Cumberland House, gives an interesting 
account of his residence there, and of the Cree Indians, 
who were frequent visitors at the fort : — 

" The winter proved extremely severe to the Indians. 
Those who were able came to the fort and received 
relief ; but many who had retired with their families 
to distant corners, to pursue their winter hunts, expe- 
rienced all the horrors of famine. One evening a poor 



190 TESTING A conjurer' 



CONJURERS SKILL. 



Indian entered tlie North-west Company's House, car- 
rying his only child in his arms, and followed by his 
starving wife. They had been hunting apart from 
the other bands, had been unsuccessful, and whilst in 
want were seized w^ith the ej^idemical disease. They 
had walked several days without eating, yet exerting 
themselves far beyond their strength that they might 
save the life of the infant. It died almost within 
sight of the house. Mr. Connolly, who was then in 
charge of the post, received them with the utmost 
humanity, and instantly placed food before them ; but 
no lano-uao-e can describe the manner in which the 
miserable father dashed the morsel from his lips and 
deplored the loss of his child. Misery may harden 
a disposition naturally bad, but it never fails to soften 
the heart of a good man. 

" Every Cree fears the medical or conjuring powers 
of his neighbor ; but at the same time exalts his own 
attainments to the skies. ' I am God-like ' is a com- 
mon expression amongst them, and they prove their 
divinity ship by eating live coals, and by various tricks 
of a similar nature. A medicine bag is an indispensa- 
ble part of a hunter's equipment, and is, when in the 
hands of a noted conjurer, such an object of terror to 
the rest of the tribe, that its possessor is enabled to 
fatten at his ease upon the labors of his deluded 
countrymen. 

" A fellow of tliis description came to Cumberland 
House in the winter of 1819. The mighty conjuror, 
immediately on his arrival at the house, began to 
trumpet oif liis powers, boasting, among other things, 
that although his hands and feet were tied as securely 
as possible, yet, when placed in a conjuring-house, he 
would speedily disengage himself by the aid of two 



/ 




1MMIN(. ON '^^o\^ snofs 




i)is(;i JSK!) ih:niki 



FEANKLIn's first land EXPEDITION". 191 

or three familiar spirits, who were attendant on his 
call. He was instantly taken at his word, and that 
his exertions might not be without an aim, a cajpot or 
great coat was promised as the reward of his success. 

" A conjuring-house having been erected in the 
usual form, that is, by sticking four willows in the 
ground, and tying their tops to a hoop at the height 
of six or eight feet, he was fettered completely, 
and placed in its narrow compartment. A moose skin 
then being thrown over the frame, secluded him from 
our view. He forthwith began to chant a kind of 
hymn in a very monotonous tone. 

" The rest of the Indians, who seemed in some doubt 
respecting the powers of a devil when put in compe- 
tition with those of a white man, ranged themselves 
round, and watched the result with anxiety. Nothing 
remarkable occurred for a long time. The conjurer 
continued his song at intervals, and it was occasionally 
taken up by those without. In this manner an hour 
and a half elapsed ; but at length our attention, which 
had begun to Hag, was roused by the violent shaking 
of the conjuring-house. It was instantly whispered 
round the circle, that at least one devil had crept 
under the moose-skin. But it proved to be only the 
" God-like man " trembling with cold. He had en- 
tered the lists, stripped to the skin, and the thermom- 
eter stood very low that evening. His attempts were 
continued, however, with considerable resolution for 
half an hour longer, when he reluctantly gave in. He 
had found no difficulty in slipping through the noose 
when it was formed by his countrymen ; but, in the 
present instance the knot was tied by Governor Wil- 
liams, who is an expert sailor. 

" These Indians, however capable they are of behav- 



192 INDIAI^ CUSTOMS. 

ing kindly, affect in their discourse to despise the 
softer sex, and on solemn occasions will not suffer 
them to eat before them, or even come into their 
presence. In this they are countenanced by the white 
residents, most of whom have Indian or half-breed 
wives, but seem afraid of treating them w^ith the ten- 
derness or attention due to every female, lest they 
should themselves be despised by the Indians. 

" Both sexes are fond of, and very indulgent to their 
children. The father never punishes them, and if the 
mother, more hasty in her temper, sometimes bestows 
a blow or two on a troublesome child, her heart is 
instantly softened by the roar which follows, and she 
mingles her tears with those that streak the smoky 
face of her darling. Tattooing is almost universal. 

" A Cree places great reliance on his drum, and I 
cannot adduce a stronger instance than that of the 
poor man who is mentioned in a preceding page, as 
having lost his only child by famine, almost within 
sight of the fort. Notwithstanding his exhausted 
state, he had an enormous drum tied to his back. 

"It was not very uncommon amongst the Canadian 
voyagers for one woman to be common to, and main- 
tained at the joint expense of two men; nor for a 
voyager to sell his wife, either for a season or alto- 
gether, for a sum of money, proportioned to her 
beauty and good qualities, but always inferior to the 
price of a team of dogs. 

" The chiefs among the Cliipewyans are now totally 
without power. The traders, however, endeavor to 
support their authority by continuing towards them 
the accustomed mai'ks of respect, hoisting the flag, 
and firing a salute of musketry on their entering the 
fort. 



fkanklin's first land expedition. 193 

" Tlie Nortliern Indians evince no little vanity, by- 
assuming to themselves the comprehensive title of 
"The People," while they designate all other nations 
by the name of their particular country. They sup- 
pose that they originally sprang from a dog ; and, 
about five years ago, a superstitious fanatic so strongly 
pressed upon their minds the impropriety of employ- 
ing these animals, to which they were related, for 
purposes of labor, that they universally resolved against 
using them any more, and, strange as it may seem, de- 
stroyed them. They now have to drag everything 
themselves on sledges. 

"This tribe, since its present intimate connection 
with the traders, has discontinued its war excursions 
against the Esquimaux, but they still speak of that 
nation in terms of the most inveterate hatred." 

On the 13th of July, Richardson and Hood arrived 
at Fort Chipewyan with two canoes, and were 
warmly greeted by Franklin and Back, w^ho were 
waiting for them. Final arrangements were now 
made for the voyage northward ; on the 18th of July 
the party set out, and arrived at Fort Providence, 
north of the Great Slave Lake, on the 29th of July. 

Flere the travelers were visited by an Indian chief 
named Akaitcho, who, Avith some of his men as hunt- 
ers and guides, was to accompany the expedition. 

" As we were informed that external appearances 
made lasting impressions upon the Indians, we pre- 
pared for the interview by decorating ourselves in uni- 
form, and suspending a medal round each of our necks. 
Our tents had been previously pitched, and over 
one of them a silken union flag was hoisted. Soon 
after noon, on July 30th, several Indian canoes were 
seen advancing in a regular line, and on their approach^ 



194 INTERVIEW WITH AKAITCHO. 

the cliief was discovered in tlie headmost, which was 
paddled by two men. On landing at the fort, the 
chief assumed a very grave aspect, and walked np to 
Mr. Wentzel with a measured and dignified step, 
looking neither to the right nor to the left, at the 
persons who had assembled on the beach to witness 
his debarkation, but preserving the same immovability 
of countenance until he reached the h-all, and was in- 
troduced to the officers. When he had smoked his 
pipe, drank a small portion of spirits and water him- 
self, and issued a glass to each of his companions, wdio 
had seated themselves on the floor, he commenced his 
harangue, by mentioning the circumstances that led 
to his agreeing to accompany the expedition, an en- 
gagement wdiich he was quite j^repared to fulfill. 

" Akaitcho and the guides having communicated all 
the information they possessed on the different points 
to which our questions had been directed, I placed 
my medal round the neck of the chief, and the officei^s 
presented theirs to an eldei* brother of his and the 
two guides. Being confeiTed in the presence of all 
the hunters, their acquisition w^as highly gratifying to 
them, but they studiously avoided any great expres- 
sion of joy, because such an exposure would Iiave 
been unbecoming the dignity which the senior Indians 
assume during a conference. 

" We presented to the chief, the two guides, and 
the seven himters, who had engaged to accompany us, 
some cloth, blankets, tobacco, knives, daggei's, besides 
other useful iron materials, and a gun to each ; also a 
keg of very weak spirits and water, which they kept 
until the evening, as they had to try their guns before 
(lark, and make the necessary preparations for com- 
mencing the journey on the following day. The In- 



feakklin's first land expedition. 195 

dians, however, did not leave us on the next day, as 
the chief was desirous of being present, with his party, 
at the dance, which was given in the evening to our 
Canadian voyagers. They Avere highly entertained by 
the vivacity and agility displayed by our companions 
in their singing and dancing : and especially by their 
imitating the gestures of a Canadian, who placed him- 
self in the most ludicrous postures ; and, whenever 
this was done, the gravity of the chief gave way to 
violent bursts of laughter. In return for the gratifi- 
cation Akaitcho had enjoyed, he desired his young 
men to exhibit the Dog-Eib Indian dance." 

Franklin and his three companions, with Frederic 
Wentzel of the North-west Co., John Hepburn, sev- 
enteen Canadian voyagers, and three Indian interpre- 
ters, left Fort Providence on the 2d of August, in 
three canoes. There was also a smaller canoe to con- 
vey the wives of three of the voyagers, and their three 
children, in company with a fleet of Indian canoes 
they paddled up the Yellow Knife River, toward a 
country which had never been visited by Europeans. 

" Akaitcho caused himself to be paddled by his 
slave, a young man, of the Dog-Rib nation, whom he 
had taken by force from his friends ; when he thought 
himself, however, out of reach of our observation, he 
laid aside a good deal of his state, and assisted in the 
labor ; and after a few day's further acquaintance 
with us, he did not hesitate to paddle in our presence, 
or even carry his canoe on the portages." 

Tlie party met with some hardships, were at 
times short of provisions, and some of the voyagers 
showed a spirit of insubordination which Franklin 
promptly quelled by threats of severest punishment. 
On the 20th of August they halted on the bank of 



196 THE WINTEH AT FORT ENTERPRISE. 

Winter Lake, and built Fort Enterprise, wliere they 
passed tlie winter ; its distance from Fort Cliipewyan 
was 533 miles. 

Franklin was anxious to pusli on to tke sea tkat fall, 
but ^\^as forced to relinquisli the idea from tlie refusal 
of Akaitclio to go witli Mm owing to scarcity of game 
on the route. 

On the 18th of October, Mr. Back and Mr. Went- 
zel, set out for Fort Providence, accomj)anied by two 
voyagers, Beaubarlant and Belanger, and two Indians, 
with their wives. 

" On the 23d of November, Belanger returned alone; 
he had walked constantly for the last six-and-thirty 
hours, leaving his Indian companions encamped at the 
last woods, they being unwilling to accompany liim 
across the barren grounds during the storm that liad 
prevailed for several days, and blew with unusual ^do- 
lence on the morning of his arrival. His locks were 
matted with snow, and he was incrusted with ice from 
head to foot, so that we scarcely recognized him when 
he burst in upon us. AYe welcomed him with the 
usual shake of the hand, but were unable to give him 
the glass of rum which every voyager receives on his 
arrival at a trading po ;t." 

On tlie 2Gth of October, Akaitcho, Avitli his party 
came into camp, owing to the deer having gone south ; 
and on the oth of November, iishing had to be relin- 
quished. As so large a number of 2:)e()|)lo could not be 
provided for at the 2:)lace, the Indians left again on 
the loth of December. 

^' Keskarrah the guide, with his wife and daughter 
remained behind. The daurditer whom we desirnia- 
ted Green-Stockings from her dress, is considered by 
her tribe to be a great beauty. Mr. Hood drew an ac- 



FEANKLIn's riEST LAND EXPEDITION. 197 

curate portrait of her, altliougli lier mother was averse 
to her sitting for it. She was afraid, she said, that 
her daughter's likeness would induce the great chief 
who resided in Eno^land to send for the orio-inal. The 
young lady, however, was undeterred by any such 
fear. She has already been an object of contest be- 
tween her countrymen, and although under sixteen 
years of age, has belonged successively to two hus- 
bands, and would probably have been the wife of 
many more, if her mother had not required her ser- 
vices as a nurse." 

Of their winter residence at this place Franklin 
says : — 

" The Sabbath was always a day of rest with us ; 
the woodmen were required to provide for the exigen- 
cies of that day on Saturday, and the party were 
dressed in their best attire. Divine service was reg- 
ularly performed, and the Canadians attended, and 
behaved with great decorum, although they were all 
Roman Catholics, and but little acquainted with the 
language in which the prayers were read. 

" Our diet consisted almost entirely of the reindeer 
meat, varied twice a week by fish, and occasionally by 
a little ilour, but we had no vegetables of any descrip- 
tion. On the Sunday mornings we drank a cup of 
chocolate, but our greatest luxury was tea (without 
sugar), of which we regularly partook twice a day. 
With reindeer's fat, and strips of cotton shirts, we 
formed candles ; and Hepburn acquired considerable 
skill in the manufacture of soap, from wood-ashes, fat, 
and salt." 

On the 27th of December, Mr. Wentzel arrived 
with two Esquimaux interpreters who had been en- 
gaged. Their English names were Augustus and 



198 RECEPTION OF A CHIEF. 

Junius. Tlie former spoke Englisli. Parties also ar- 
rived from time to time bringing on tlie stores wliich 
had been left at Fort Providence. 

" On tbe I7tli of March, Mr. Back returned from 
Fort Cliipewyan, having traveled since he started out 
more than one thousand miles on foot, with no shel- 
ter at night excepting a blanket and deer skin, and 
often without food. The Indians had sometimes given 
him a fish or bird which they caught, with the remark, 
" we are accustomed to starvation, and you are not." 

" On the 21st of April, all our men returned from 
the Indians, and Akaitcho was on his way to the fort. 
In the afternoon two of his young men arrived to an- 
nounce his visit, and to request that he might be re- 
ceived with a salute and other marks of respect that 
he had been accustomed to on visiting Fort Providence 
in the Spring. I complied with his desire although I 
regretted the expenditure of ammunition, and sent 
the young men away with the customary present of 
powder to enable him to return the salute, some to- 
bacco, vermilion to paint their faces, a comb, and a 
looking-glass. 

" At eleven Akaitcho arrived ; upon the first notice 
of his ap2:)earance the flag was hoisted at the fort, and 
upon his nearer approach, a number of muskets were 
fired by a j)arty of our peo2:)le, and returned by his 
young men. Akaitcho preceded by his standard- 
bearer, led the i)arty, and advanced wath a slow and 
solemn step to the door where Mr. Wentzel and I re- 
ceived liiiii. The faces of the party were daubed with 
vermilion, the old men having a s])()t on the right 
cheek, the young ones on the left. Akaitcho liimself 
was not painted. On entering he sat down on a chest, 
the rest placing themselves in a circle on the floor. 



franklin's first land expedition. 199 

The pipe was passed once or twice round, and in tlie 
meantime a bowl of spirits and water, and a present 
considerable for our circumstances, of cloth, blankets, 
capots, shirts, &c., was placed on the floor for the 
chief's acceptance, and distribution amongst his peo- 
ple. Akaitcho then commenced his speech, but I re- 
gret to say, that it was very discouraging, and indi- 
cated that he had parted with his good humor, at 
least since his March visit." 

On the 4th of June, a part of the company under 
Richardson, started northward; some dragged stores 
on sledges, and others carried them on their backs. 
Another party started June 14th, with canoes dragged 
by men and dogs. On the 21st, the whole expedition, 
with Akaitcho and some of his hunters, was encamp- 
ed at Point Lake. The Indian families and the rest 
of the tribe had gone off to a large lake to spend the 
summer, and Akaitcho who had expended the am- 
munition given to him, finally admitted that nearly 
all of it had been given to those who had gone with 
the Indian families ; Franklin was greatly distressed at 
this occurrence. 

Five hunters were now sent ahead to hunt ; and on 
the 25th of June the journey was resumed, Akaitcho 
and ^ve other Indians accompanying the travelers. 
On the 29th " our attention was directed to some pine 
branches scattered on the ice, which proved to be 
marks placed by our hunters, to guide us to the spot 
where they had deposited the carcasses of two small 
deer. This supply was very seasonable, and the men 
cheerfully dragged the additional weight." 

On the 1st of July they embarked on the Copper- 
mine River, which was there two hundred yards wide 
and ten feet deep, and run very rapidly over a rocky 

12 



200 encotj:ntt:ii with ESQumAUX. 

bottom. Tliey now descended the river to a place 
named by Hearne, the Bloody Falls, in consequence 
of a dreadful massacre there of Esquimaux by the 
Chipewyan Indians. As it was a customary resort of 
'Esquimaux, Junius and Augustus were sent forward, 
armed with concealed pistols, and with beads, looking 
glasses, etc., to conciliate their countrymen by pres- 
ents. They fell in with a small party of them, who 
appeared to be mild, peaceable creatures ; but they 
disappeared in the night. 

"On the morning of the 16th, just as the crew were 
putting the canoe in the water, Adam arrived in the 
utmost consternation, and informed us that a party of 
Esquimaux were pursuing the men whom he had sent 
to collect floats. The orders for embarking were in- 
stantly countermanded, and we went with a party of 
men to their rescue. We soon met our people return- 
ing at a slow pace, and learned that they had come 
unawares upon the Esquimaux party, which consisted 
of six men, with their women and children, who were 
traveling towards the rapid with a considerable num- 
ber of dogs cany i 11 g their baggage. The women 
hid themselves on the first alarm, but the men ad- 
vanced, and stopping at some distance from our men, 
began to dance in a circle, tossing up their hands in 
the air and accompanying their motions with much 
shouting, to signify, I conceive, their desire of peace. 
Our men saluted them by pulling off their hats, and 
making bows, but neither party was willing to ap- 
proach the other ; and, at length, the Esquimaux re- 
tired to the hill, from whence they had descended 
when first seen. 

^' We proceeded m the hope of gaining an interview 
with them, but lest our appearance in a body should 



FEAIN^KLIN S FIEST LAIS^D EXPEDITION. 201 

alarm them, we advanced in a long line, at the head 
of which was Augustus. We were led to their bag- 
gage, which they had deserted, by the howling of the 
dogs ; and on the summit of the hill we found, lying 
behind a stone, an old man, who was too infirm to ef- 
fect his escape with the rest. He was much terrified 
"svhen Augustus advanced, and probably expected im- 
mediate death ; but that the fatal blow might not be 
unrevenged, he seized his spear, and made a thrust 
with it at his supposed enemy. Augustus, however, 
easily repressed his feeble effort, and soon calmed his 
fears by presenting him with some pieces of iron, and 
assuring him of his friendly intentions." 

On the 17th, nine Esquimaux appeared on the bank 
of the nver opposite the encampment, carrying their 
canoes on their backs, but they fied on seeing the 
tents. Not only were these people alarmed, but the 
Indians also were so terrified that they insisted on re- 
turning the next day ; nor could Franklin induce even 
one hunter to remain with him. The interpreters too 
were much frightened and requested their discharge ; 
but it was refused, and they were closely watched to 
prevent their desertion. 

The reduced party proceeded, and on the 18th of 
July reached the Polar Sea. The Canadians were 
much interested at the first view, although despondent, 
and Hepburn, the English sailor, was quite elated at 
beholding again his favorite element. 

On the 19th, Mr. Wentzel and four discharged Ca- 
nadians started on their return southward. The party 
now numbered about twenty, who, in two canoes with 
fifteen day's provisions, embarked 21st July, to navi- 
gate the sea to the eastward. 

They proceeded on, along a dreary coast, making new 



202 THE RETUKX JOURXEY C0]M:VIE]N'CED 

discoveries, but meeting no Esquimaux from wliom 
they liad hoped to get provisions, wliicli were rapidly 
diminishinsr. A few deer and a bear were cauirht, and 
a veiy few fish. 

On the 30th of July they passed the mouth of a 
river which they named Hood. On the 5th of Au- 
gust they reached the mouth of a river which is now 
known as Back, or Great Fish River. 

On the 15th of August the canoes were found to be 
in an unseaworthy condition, and there was only 
three day's supply of provisions remaining, with poor 
prospects of obtaining more. " It was evident that the 
time spent in exploring the Arctic and Melville Sounds 
and Bathurst's Inlet, had precluded the hope of reach- 
ing Bepulse Bay, which at the outset of the voyage 
we had fondly cherished ; and it was equally obvious 
that as our distance from any of the trading establish- 
ments would increase as we proceeded, the hazardous 
traverse across the barren grounds, which we should 
have to make, if compelled to abandon the canoes \ij>- 
on any part of the coast, would become greater." 

The most eastern land seen was Point Turn-again, 
distant from Coppermine River by the way they came 
nearly six hundred miles. The return Journey was 
begun on the 2 2d of August, and on tlie 25th the 
2")aii:y encamped on the banks of Hood's River, at the 
foot of the first rapids. " Here terminated our voyage 
on the Arctic sea, during wliich we had gone over six 
hundred and fifty geographical miles. Our Canadian 
voyagers could not restrain their expressions of joy at 
having turned their backs on the sea, and they passed 
the evening talking over their past adventures with 
much humor and no little exaggeration. The consid- 
eration that tHe most painful, and certainly the most 



TEAI^KLIIS^'S FIEST LAISTD EXPEDITION. 203 

hazardous, part of tlie journey was yet to come, did 
not depress tlieir spirits at all." 

At a few miles up Hood's River, it runs for about 
a mile tlirougli a narrow cliasm, tlie walls of which, 
are upward of two hundred feet in height, and quite 
perpendicular. Through this chasm the river precip- 
itates itself in two magnificient falls, close to' each 
other. The large canoes not being suited to this river, 
two smaller ones were constructed out of their mate- 
rials, to be used when crossing rivers. 

The construction of the new canoes detained them 
till the first of September, when it was decided to make 
a direct line to the part of Point Lake opposite the 
Spring encampment, distant only 149 miles in a straight 
line from where they were. Having proceeded twelve 
miles, a snow-storm obliged them to encamp, and on 
the 3d, the last piece of pemmican and a little arrow- 
root were distributed for supper. 

The violence of the storm continued till the 7th ; and 
for several days, having nothing to eat, and no means 
of making a tire, they remained whole days in bed, 
and, with a temperature of 20^, without iire, the 
party weak from fasting, their garments and tents 
frozen stiif and the ground covered with three feet of 
snow, their condition w^as very unlit for traveling in 
such a country. On trying to proceed, Franklin was 
seized with a fainting-fit, in consequence of exhaust- 
ion and sudden exposure to the wind, but on eating a 
morsel of portable soup he recovered. One of the 
canoes was broken to pieces, and a fire was made with 
it to cook the remnant of portable soup and arro^v- 
root; a scanty meal after three days' fasting. 

The next two days the surface of the barren 
grounds was covered with large stones, bearing a 



204 



CROSSING A EIA'EPw. 



lichen wliicli the Canadians call tripe de rocJie or, rock- 
tripe, a substance to ^diich the travelers may be said 
to owe their safety and existence ; without it they 
must all have died of starvation. 

An unknown river was crossed on the 0th. The 
canoe being put into the water was found veiy leaky, 
but it was managed with much dexterity by St. Ger- 
main, Adam, and Peltier, who ferried over one pas- 
senger at a time, causing him to lie flat in its bottom. 
The next day a musk-ox was shot. To skin and cut 
up the animal was the work of a few minutes. The 
contents of its stomach were devoured upon the spot, 
and the raw intestines, which were next attacked, 
were pronounced by the most delicate to be excellent. 

On the 13th several of tlie party were sick from 
eating rock-tripe, and it was then discovered that the 
fishing nets had been thrown away by some one, and 
that the floats had been burned, thus depriving the 
party of their chief resource for food. 

On the morninor of the 14th, while the oflicers were 
assembled round a small fire, Pen^ault, one of the voy- 
agers, presented each of them with a small piece of 
meat, which he had saved from his allowance. " It 
was received," says Franklin, " with great thankful- 
ness, and such an act of self-denial and kindness, be- 
ing totally unexpected in a Canadian voyager, filled 
our eyes with tears." 

On the same day, Franklin, St. Germain, and Be- 
langer, embarked in the canoe to cross the river, and 
when in the midst of it, the current and a strong 
breeze drove tlie canoe to the very bnnk of a tremen- 
dous rapid. Belanger, unluckily, applied his j)ad(lle to 
avei-t the danger of being forced down the rapid ; he 
lost his balance, and the canoe overset in the midst of 
the rapid. 



feanklin's fiest land expedition. 205 

" "We fortunately kept hold of it, until we touclied 
a rock where tke water did not reack kigker tkan our 
waists; kere we kept our footing, notwitkstan ding tke 
strengtk of tke current, until tke water was emptied 
out of tke canoe. Belanger tken keld tke canoe steady 
wkilst St. Germain placed me in it, and afterwards 
embarked kimself in a very dexterous manner. It 
was impossible, kowever, to embark Belanger, as tke 
canoe would kave been kurried down tke rapid, tke 
moment ke skould kave raised kis foot from tke rock 
on wkick ke stood. We were, tkerefore, compelled 
to leave kirn in kis perilous situation. We kacl not 
gone twenty yards before tke canoe, strildng on a sud- 
den rock, went down, Tke place being skallow, we 
were again enabled to empty it, and tke tkird attempt 
brougkt us to tke skore. 

" In tke mean time Belanger was suffering extreme- 
ly, immersed to kis midd_le in tke centre of a rapid, 
tke upper part of kis body covered witk wet clotkes, 
exposed in a temperature not muck above zero, to a 
strong breeze. He called piteously for relief, and St. 
Germain on kis return endeavored to embark kim, but 
in vain. Tke canoe was kurried down tke rapid, and 
wkeii ke landed ke was rendered by tke cold incapa- 
ble of furtker exertion, and Adam attempted to em- 
bark Belanger, but found it impossible. An attempt 
was next made to cany out to kim a line, made of tke 
slin^rs of tke men's loads. Tkis also failed, tke cur- 
rent acting so strongly upon it, as to prevent tke canoe 
from steering, and it was finally broken and carried 
down tke stream. At lengtk, wken Belanger's strengtk 
seemed almost exkausted, tke canoe readied kim with 
a small cord belonging to one of tke nets, and ke was 
dragged perfectly senseless tkrougk tke rapid. By 



206 EXCITING ADVENTURES. 

the direction of Dr. Eicliardson, lie was instantly 
stripped, and being rolled up in blankets, two men 
undressed themselves and went to hed with him ; but 
it was some hours before he recovered his warmth and 
sensations. 

" It is impossible to describe my sensations as I mt- 
nessed the various unsuccessful attempts to relieve 
Belanger. The distance prevented my seeing distinct- 
ly what was going on, and I continued pacing up and 
down upon the rock on which I landed, regardless of 
the coldness of my drenched and stiffening garments. 
The canoe, in every attempt to reach him, was hurried 
down the rapid, and was lost to the view amongst the 
rocky islets, with a rapidity that seemed to threaten 
certain destruction ; once, indeed, I fancied that I saw 
it overwhelmed in the waves. Such an event would 
have ]>een fatal to the whole party. Separated as I 
was from my companions, without gun, ammunition^ 
hatchet, or the means of making a tire, and in wet 
clothes, my doom would have been speedily sealed. 
My companions too, driven to the necessity of coast- 
ing the lake, must have sunk under the fatigue of 
rounding its innumerable arms and bays, which, as 
we have learned from the Indians, are veiy extensive. 
By the goodness of Providence, however, we were 
spared at that time, and some of us have l>een pennit- 
ted to offer up our thanksgivings, in a civilized land, 
for tlie signal deliverances we then and afterward ex- 
perienced. 

"On the 20th we got into a hilly country, and the 
marching became much more laborious. Mr. Hood 
was particularly weak, and was obliged to relinquish 
his station of second in the line, which Dr. Richard- 
son now took, to direct the leading man in keeping 



TRANKLIn's riEST LAND EXPEDITION. 207 

the appointed course. I was also unable to keep pace 
witii tlie men, wlio put fortli their utmost speed, en- 
coui'aged by the hope, which our reckoning had led us 
to form, of seeing Point Lake in the evening, but we 
were obliged to encamp without gaining a view of it." 

On the 2 2d they came to a large lake and followed 
its coast southerly. As the wind was strong it was 
difficult to carry the canoe over the hills, and it got 
several falls, and Peltier and Yaillant, wdio were carry- 
ing it, finally left it behind. "The anguish this 
intelligence occasioned may be conceived, but it is be- 
yond my power to describe it. Impressed, however, 
with the necessity of taking it forward, even in the 
state these men represented it to be, we urgently de- 
sired them to fetch it ; but they declined going, and 
the strength of the officers was inadequate to the task. 
To their infatuated obstinacy on this occasion, a 
great portion of the melancholy circumstances which 
attended our subsequent progress may, perhaps, be at- 
tributed. The men now seemed lost to all hope of 
being preserved ; and all the arguments we could use 
failed in stimulating them to the least exertion. 

" After consuming the remains of the bones and horns 
of the deer we resumed our march, and in the eve- 
ning reached a contracted part of the lake, which per- 
ceiving to be shallow, we forded and encamped on 
the opposite side. Heavy rain began soon afterwards, 
and continued all the night. On the following morn- 
ing the rain had so wasted the snow, that the tracks 
of Mr. Back and his companions, who had gone before 
with the hunters, were traced with difficulty ; and the 
frequent showers during the day almost obliterated 
them. The men became furious at the apprehension 
of being deserted by the hunters, and some of the 



208 ATTEMPTS TO CROSS THE COPPERMINE. 

strongest throwing down their bundles, prepared to 
set out after them, intending to leave the more weak 
to follow as they could. The entreaties and threats 
of the officers, however, prevented their executing 
this mad scheme ; but not before Solomon Belanger 
was despatched with orders for Mr. Back to halt until 
we should join him. The bounty of Providence was 
most seasonably manifested to us next morning, in 
our killing ^ve small deer out of a herd, which came 
in sight as we were on the point of starting. This 
unexpected supply reanimated the drooping spirits of 
our men and filled every heart with gratitude." 

On the 26th of September they reached the Copper- 
mine River ; and now for the first time the men saw 
their folly in refusing to bring the canoe. In hopes 
of finding some material for building a raft, they pro- 
ceeded along the river to the east end of Point Lake 
where they encamped. Here Mr. Back and the inter- 
preters were sent f orw^ard to hunt, and to communicate 
with the Indians supposed to be at Fort Enterprise. 
The balance of the party started the same day in a 
straggling and despondent mood. The putrid carcass 
of a deer which they found, furnished a supper and 
greatly revived the spirits of all, and they concluded 
to try and get across on a raft of green willows, and 
made one capable of holding up one man at a time. 

" At tliis time Dr. Richardson, prompted by a desire 
of relieving liis suffering companions, proposed to 
8\^dm across the stream with a line, and to haul the 
raft over. He launched into the stream with the line 
round his middle, l)ut when he had got a short dis- 
tance from the bank, his arms became benumbed with 
cold, and he lost the power of moving them ; still he 
persevered, and turning on his back, had nearly gained 



FRANKLIN S FIRST LAND EXPEDITION. 209 

tlie opposite bank, wlien his legs also became power- 
less, and to our infinite alarm we belield him sink. 
We instantly hauled upon the line and he came again 
on the surface, and was gradually drawn ashoi'e in an 
almost lifeless state. Being rolled up in blankets, he 
was placed before a good fire of willows, and fortu- 
nately was just able to speak sufiiciently to give some 
slight directions respecting the manner of treating 
him. He recovered strength gradually, and by the 
blessing of God was enabled in the course of a few 
hours to converse, and by the evening was sufiiciently 
recovered to remove into the tent. We then regretted 
to learn, that the skin of his whole left side was 
deprived of feeling in consequence of exposure to too 
great heat. He did not perfectly recover the sensa- 
tion of that side until the following summer." 
! On the 1st of October, Back and the interpreters 
returned, having been unable to cross the water. As 
the willow canoe was impracticable, St. Germain pro- 
posed to build one of some painted canvas, and men 
were sent off to collect pitch from some small pines 
which had been passed on the journey. 

" On the following morning the ground was covered 
with snow to the depth of a foot and a half, and the 
weather was very stormy. These circumstances ren- 
dered the men again extremely despondent ; a settled 
gloom hung over their countenances, and they refused 
to pick tripe de rocJie, choosing rather to go eixtirely 
without eating, than to make any exertion. The 
party which went for gum returned early in the morn- 
ing without having found any ; but St. Germain said 
he could still make the canoe with the willows cover- 
ed with the canvas, and removed with Adam to a 
clump of willows for that purpose. Mr. Back accom- 



210 BUILDING A CANOE. 

panied tliem to stimulate his exertion, as we feared 
tlie lowness of his spirits would cause him to be slow 
in his operations. Augustus went to fish at the rapid, 
but a large trout having carried away his bait, we had 
nothing to replace it. 

" The snow-storm continued all the night, and dur- 
ing the forenoon of the 3d. Ha\dng persuaded the 
people to gather some trijye de roche, I partook of a 
meal with them ; and afterwards set out mth the in- 
tention of going to St. Germain to hasten his opera- 
tions, but though he was only three-quarters of a mile 
distant, I spent three hours in a vain attempt to reach 
him, my strength being unequal to the labor of wad- 
ing through the deep snow ; and I returned quite ex- 
hausted, and much shaken by the numerous falls I 
had got. My associates were all in the same debilita- 
ted state, and poor Hood was reduced to a perfect 
shadow, from the severe bowel complaints which the 
tnj)e de roclie never failed to give him. Back was so 
feeble as to require the support of a stick in walking ; 
and Dr. Richardson had lameness superadded to weak- 
ness. The voyagers were somewhat stronger than 
ourselves, but more indisposed to exei-tion, on account 
of their despondency. The sensation of hunger was 
no longer felt by any of us, yet Ave were scarcely able 
to converse upon any other subject than the pleasures 
of eating. Hepburn, on the contrary, animated by a 
firm reliance on the beneficence of the Supreme Being, 
tempered with resignation to his will, was indefatiga- 
ble in his exertions to serve us, and daily collected all 
the tripe de roclie that was used in the officers' mess. 

^' Od. 4. — The canoe being finislied, it ^vas brought 
to the encampment, and the whole party being assem- 
bled in anxious expectation on the beach, St. Germain 



FEAKKLIN's riEST LAl^B EXPEDITION-. 211 

embarked, and amidst our prayers for liis success, suc- 
ceeded in reaching the opposite shore. The canoe 
was then drawn back again, and another person trans- 
ported, and in this manner, by drawing it backwards 
and forwards, they were all conveyed over without 
any serious accident. 

" That no time might be lost in procuring relief, I 
immediately despatched Mr. Back with St. Germain, 
Solomon Belanger, and Beauparlant, to search for the 
Indians, directing him to go to Fort Enterprise, where 
we expected they would be, or where, at least, a note 
from Mr. Wentzel would be found to direct us in our 
search for them. If St. Germain should kill any ani- 
mals on his way, a portion of the meat was to be put 
up securely for us, and conspicuous marks placed over 
it. 

"It is impossible to imagine a more gratifying 
change than was produced in our voyagers after we 
were all safely landed on the southern banks of the 
river. Their spirits immediately revived, each of them 
shook the officers cordially by the hand, and declared 
they now considered the worst of their difficulties 
over, as they did not doubt of reaching Fort Enter- 
prise in a few days, even in their feeble condition. 

"Our advance from the depth of the snow was 
slow. Mr. Hood, who was now very feeble, and Dr. 
Richardson, who attached himself to him, walked 
together at a gentle pace in the rear of the party. I 
kept with the foremost men, to cause them to halt 
occasionally, until the stragglers came up. We had a 
small quantity of this t?'ipe de roclie in the evening, 
and the rest of our supper was made up of scraps of 
roasted leather." 

About this time two of the men, Credit and Vail- 



212 sepaeatio:n' of the company. 

lant, gave out, and were reported to be a mile behind, 
in the snow. Dr. Eicliardson went back and found 
Vaillant mucli exhausted wdtli cold and hunger, but 
was oblio-ed to leave him. J. B. Belano^er then went 
to his aid and brought on his burden, but could not 
arouse him, and neither he nor Yaillant were seen 
afterwards. Junius, too, had left some days before to 
hunt, and never returned. The men were unable to 
carry their loads further, and, to relieve them and be 
in condition to assist any who might give out, Mr. 
Hood and Dr. Richardson proposed to remain behind. 

" The weather was mild next mornino^. We left the 
encampment at nine, and a little before noon came to 
a pretty extensive thicket of small willows, near which 
there appeared a supply of tripe de roclte on the face 
of the rocks. At this place Dr. Eichardson and Mr. 
Hood determined to remain, with John Hepburn, who 
volunteered to stop with them. Tlie tent was securely 
pitched, a few willows collected, and the ammunition 
and all other articles were deposited, except each 
man's clothing, one tent, a sufficiency of ammunition 
for the journey, and the officer's journals. I had only 
one blanket, Avhich was carried for me, and two pair 
of shoes. The oifer was now made for any of tlie 
men, who felt themselves too Aveak to proceed, to re- 
main with the officers, but none of them accepted it. 
Michel ah)ne felt some inclination to do so. After 
Ave had united in thanksgiA- ing and 2)rayers to Almighty 
God, I separated from my companions." This part- 
ing took place on the 7th of October, at a distance of 
about twenty-four miles from Fort Enterprise. 

"Descending afterwards into a more level country, 
Ave found the snow very deep, and the labor of Avad- 
ing through it so fatigued the whole party, that Ave 



feai^klin's fiest land expeditioi^. 213 

were compelled to encamp, after a march of four 
miles and a half. Belanger and Michel were left far 
behind, and when they arrived at the encampment 
appeared quite exhausted. The former, bursting into 
tears, declared his inability to proceed with the party, 
and begged me to let him go back next morning to 
the tent, and shortly afterwards Michel made the 
same recpest. ISTot being able to find any tripe de 
roclie^ we drank an infusion of the Labrador tea plant, 
and ate a few morsels of burnt leather for supper. 
We were unable to raise the tent, and found its weight 
too great to carry it on ; we, therefore, cut it u|), and 
took a part of the canvas for a cover. The night 
was bitterly cold, and though we lay as close to each 
other as possible, having no shelter, we could not keep 
ourselves sufficiently warm to sleep. A strong gale 
came on after midnight, which increased the severity 
of the weather." 

In the morning Belanger and Michel were permit- 
ted to go back, and were left sitting in the encamp- 
ment. Soon afterward two of the other men Perrault 
and Fontano, were seized with dizziness and betrayed 
symptoms of extreme debility ; one of them, bursting 
into tears, declared his inability to go on, and the other, 
the next day, was completely exhausted ; each, at his 
own request, was permitted to return to Dr. Richard- 
son's encampment, where fire and rock-tripe were to 
be obtained. Only one of them, however, (Michel, 
the Iroquois,) arrived ; the other three were nev- 
er heard of ; and fortunate indeed would it have been if 
the survivor had perished with the rest. Fontano 
was an Italian, a faithful man, for whom Franklin 
had a tender res:ard. 

The party, now reduced to five, Augustus having 



214 A DESERTED FORT. 

gone alieacl, continued tlie journey with no alleviation 
of their sufferings, excepting the comfort one day of 
a large iire — the first deserving the name since leaving 
the coast. HaA^ng no rock-tripe they drank some tea 
and ate some of their shoes for supper. 

"At length we reached Fort Enterprise, and to our in- 
finite disappointment found it a perfectly desolate hab- 
itation. There was no deposit of j)ro vision, no trace 
of the Indians, no letter from Mr. Wentzel to point 
out where the Indians might be found. It would be 
impossible for me to describe our sensations after en- 
tering this miserable abode, and discovering how we 
had been neglected ; the whole party shed tears, not 
so much for our own fate, as for that of our friends in 
the rear, whose lives depended entirely on our send- 
ing immediate relief from this place. 

" I found a note, however, from Mr. Back, stating 
that he had reached the house two days ago, and was 
going in search of the Indians, at a place where St. 
Germain deemed it probable they might be found. If 
he was unsuccessful, he purposed walking to Foii; 
Providence, and sending succor from thence. 

"We now looked round for the means of subsistence, 
and were gratified to find several deer skins, which 
had been thrown away during our former residence. 
The bones were gathered from the heap of ashes ; these 
with the skins, and the addition of tripe de roclie, we 
considered would support us tolerably well for a time. 
We procured fuel by pulling up the flooring of the 
other rooms, and water for the purpose of cooking by 
melting the snow. Whilst we were seated round tlie 
fire singeing the deer skin for supper, we were rejoiced 
by the unexpected entrance of Augustus. He had 
followed quite a different course from ours. 



teai^klin's fiest land expedition. 215 

"In tlie afternoon of tlie 14tli, Belanger arrived 
witli a note from Mr. Back, stating tliat lie had seen no 
traces of the Indians, and desiring further instructions 
as to the course he should pursue. Belanger's situa- 
tion, however, required our first care, as he came in al- 
most speechless, and covered with ice, having fallen 
into a rajDid, and for the third time since we left the 
coast, narrowly escaped drowning." Franklin decided 
to start for Fort Providence, and sent by Belanger 
directions to Back to meet him at Bainbow Lake ; but 
one of the men, Adam, became unable to travel, and 
leaving Peltier and Samandre behind with him, the 
other three started off alone. 

" No language that I can use could adequately de- 
scribe the parting scene. I shall only say there was 
far more calmness and resignation to the Divine will 
evinced by every one than could have been expected. 
We were all cheered by the hope that the Indians 
would be found by the one party, and relief sent to 
the other. Those who remained entreated us to make 
all the haste we could." 

Franklin was unable to keep up with his compan- 
ions, and leaving them to go on alone, returned to the 
house, where he found the men much dispirited and 
failing, two of them being unable to leave their beds. 

" We perceived our strength decline every day, and 
every exertion began to be irksome ; when we were 
once seated the greatest effort was necessary in order 
to rise, and we had frequently to lift each other from 
our seats ; but CA^en in this pitiable condition we con- 
versed cheerfully, being sanguine as to the speedy ar- 
rival of the Indians. Having expended all the wood 
which we could procure from our present dwelling, 

without endangering its falling, Peltier began this 

13 



216 STARVATION LIFE AT TORT ENTERPRISE. 

day to pull down tlie partitions of tlie adjoining 

houses. 

" On tlie 29tli, Peltier felt Ms pains more severe and 
could only cut a few pieces of wood. Samandre, wlio 
was still almost as weak, relieved liim a little time, 
and I assisted tliem in carrying in the wood. We 
saw a herd of reindeer sporting on the river, about 
half a mile from the house ; they remained there a 
considerable time, but none of the party felt them- 
selves sufficiently strong to go after them, nor was 
there one of us who could have fired a gun without 
resting it. 

" Whilst we were seated round the fire this evening, 
discoursing about the anticipated relief, the conversa- 
tion was suddenly interrupted by Peltier's exclaiming 
with joy, ''Ah! le monde ! " imagining that he heard 
the Indians in the other room; immediately after- 
wards, to his bitter disappointment. Dr. Eichardson 
and Hepburn entered, each carrying his bundle. Pel- 
tier, however, soon recovered himself enough to express 
his joy at their safe arrival, and his regret that their 
companions were not with them. When I saw them 
alone my own mind was instantly filled with appre- 
hensions respecting my friend Hood, and our other 
companions, which, were immediately confirmed by the 
Doctor's melancholy communication, that Mr. Hood, 
and Michel were dead. Perrault and Fontano had 
neither reached the tent nor been heard of by them, 
^aiepburn having shot a partridge, which was 
brought to the house, the Doctor tore out the feathers, 
and having held it to the fire a few minutes, divided it 
into seven portions. Each piece was ravenously de- 
voured by my companions, as it was the first morsel 
of flesh any of us had tasted for thirty-one days, un- 



FEANKLLN-'S FIEST J. AND EXPEDITIOl^, 217 

less indeed tlie small gristly particles wMcIl we found 
occasionally adliering to tlie pounded Lones may be 
termed flesli. Our S23irits were revived Iby this small 
supply, and tlie Doctor endeavored to raise tliem still 
Mglier by tlie prospect of Hej)burn's being able to 
kill a deer next day, as they bad seen, and even iired 
at, several near tbe liouse. Having brought bis pray- 
er-book and Testament, some prayers and psalms, and 
portions of scripture, aj)propriate to our situation, 
were read, and we retired to bed. 

" Next morning tbe Doctor and Hepburn went out 
early in search of deer ; but, though they saw seve- 
ral herds and tired some shots, they were not so for- 
tunate as to kill any, being too weak to hold their 
guns steadily. The cold compelled the former to 
return soon, but Hepburn persisted until late in the 
evening. 

" After our usual supper of singed skin and bone 
soup, Dr. Richardson acquainted me with the afflict- 
ing circumstances attending the death of Mr. Hood 
and Michel and detailed occurrences subsequent which 
I shall give from his journal in his own words." 




CHAPTER XV. 

FEANKLIN'S FIRST LAND EXPEDITION. 

(continued.) 

DR. KICHAEDSON's NARRATIVE. 

" After Captain Franklin liad bidden us farewell, 
we remained seated by tlie fireside as long as tlie 
willows, the men liad cut for us before they departed, 
lasted. We had no trijje de roche that day, but drank 
an infusion of the country tea-plant, which was grate- 
ful from its warmth, although it afforded no suste- 
nance. We then retired to bed, where we remained 
all the next day, as the weather was stormy, and the 
snow-drift so heavy, as to destroy every prospect of 
success in our endeavors to light a fire with the green 
and frozen willows, which were our only fuel. Through 
the extreme kindness and forethought of a lady, the 
party, previous to leaving London, had been furnished 
with a small collection of religious books, of which we 
still retained two or three of the most portable, and 
they proved of incalculable benefit to us. We read 
portions of them to each other as we lay in bed, in 
addition to the morning and evening service, and found 
that they inspired us on each perusal with so strong a 
sense of the omnipresence of a beneficent God, that 
our situation, even in these wilds, aj^peared no longer 
destitute ; and we conversed, not only with calmness, 

218 



219 

btrt witli cheerfulness, detailing, with unrestrained 
confidence tlie past events of our lives, and dwelling 
witli hope on our future prospects. Had my poor 
friend been spared to revisit his native land, I should 
look back to this period with unalloyed delight. 

" On the morning of October 9th, the weather, 
although still cold, was clear, and I went out in quest 
of tripe de rocJie^ leaving Hepburn to cut willows for 
a fire, and Mr. Hood in bed. I had no success, as 
yesterday's snow drift was so frozen on the surface of 
the rocks that I could not collect any of the weed ; 
but, on my return to the tent, I found that Michel, 
the Iroquois, had come with a note from Mr. Franklin. 
Michel informed us that he quitted Mr. Franklin's 
party yesterday morning, but, that having missed his 
way, he had passed the night on the snow a mile or 
two to the northward of us. Belanger, he said, being 
impatient, had left the fire about two hours' earlier, 
and as he had not arrived, he sup230sed he had gone 
astray. It will be seen in the sequel, that we had 
more than sufiicient reason to doubt the truth of this 
story. 

" Michel now produced a hare and a partridge which 
he had killed in the morning. This unexpected sup- 
ply of provision was received by us with a deep sense 
of gratitude to the Almighty for his goodness, and we 
looked upon Michel as the instrument he had chosen 
to preserve all our lives. He complained of cold, and 
Mr. Hood offered to share his buffalo robe mth him 
at night : I gave him one of two shirts which I wore, 
whilst Hepburn, in the warmth of his heart, exclaimed, 
^ How I shall love this man if I find that he does not 
tell lies like the others.' Our meals being finished, 
we arranged that the greatest part of the things should 



220 DR. Richardson's :^rARRATrvE. 

be carried to tlie pines tlie next clay ; and after reading 
tlie evening service, retired to bed full of liope. 

" Early in the morning Hepburn, Michel, and my- 
self, carried tlie ammunition, and most of the other 
heavy articles to the pines. Michel was our guide, 
and it did not occur to us at the time that his con- 
ducting us perfectly straight was incompatible with 
his stoiy of having gone astray on liis way to us. He 
now informed us that he had, on his way to the tent, 
left on the hill above the j)ines a gun and forty-eight 
balls, which Perrault had given him when with the 
rest of Mr. Franklin's party, he took leave of him. 
It will be seen, on a reference to Mr. Franklin's jour- 
nal, that Perrault carried his gun and ammunition 
with him when they parted from Michel and Belan- 
ger. After we had made a fire, and drank a little of 
the country tea, Hepburn and I returned to the tent, 
where we arrived in the evening, much exhausted with 
our journey. Michel preferred sleeping where he was, 
and requested us to leave him the hatchet, which we 
did, after he had promised to come early in the morn- 
ing to assist us in carrying the tent and bedding. 
Mr. Hood remained in bed all day. Seeing nothing 
of Belanger to-day, we gave him up for lost. 

"On the 11th, after waiting imtil late in the morn- 
ing for Michel, who did not come, Hepburn and I 
loaded ourselves with the bedding, and accompanied 
by Mr. Hood, set out for the j)ines. Mr. Hood was 
much affected with dimness of sight, giddiness, and 
other symptoms of extreme debility, which caused us 
to move very slow, and to make frequent halts. On 
arriving at the pines, we were much alarmed to find 
that Michel was absent. We feai'ed that he had lost 
his way in coming to us in the morning, although it 



221 

was not easy to conjecture how tliat could have hap- 
pened, as our footsteps of yesterday were very distinct. 
Hepburn went back for the tent, and returned with it 
after dusk, completely worn out with the fatigue of 
the day. Michel, too, arrived at the same time, and 
relieved our anxiety on his account. He reported that 
he had been in chase of some deer which passed near 
his sleeping-place in the morning, and although he did 
not come up with them, yet that he found a wolf 
which had been killed by the stroke of a deer's horn, 
and had brought a part of it. We implicitly believed 
this story then, but afterwards became convinced from 
circumstances, the detail of which may be spared, that 
it must have been a portion of the body of Belanger 
or Perrault. 

" A question of moment here presents itself ; name- 
ly, whether he actually murdered these men, or either 
of them, or whether he found the bodies on the snow. 
Captain Franklin conjectures, that Michel having 
already destroyed Belanger, completed his crime by 
Perrault's death, in order to screen himself from detec- 
tion. 

" On the following morning the tent was pitched, 
and Michel went out early, refused my offer to accom- 
pany him, and remained out the whole day. He 
would not sleep in the tent that night, but chose to 
lie at the fireside. 

" On the 13th there was a heavy gale of wind, and 
we passed the day by the fire. Next day, about two 
P. M., the gale abating, Michel set out as he said to 
hunt, but returned unexpectedly in a very short time. 
This conduct surprised us, and his contradictory and 
evasory answers to our questions excited some suspic- 
ions, but they did not turn towards the truth. 



222 DE. eichaedson's naeeative. 

" October 15tli. — In tlie course of this day Michel 
expressed mucli regret -that lie had staid behind Mr. 
Franklin's party, and declared that he would set out 
for the house at once if he knew the way. We en- 
deavored to soothe him, and to raise his hopes of the 
Indians speedily coming to our relief, but without 
success. 

" Next day he refused either to hunt or cut wood, 
spoke in a very surly manner, and threatened to leave 
us. Under these circumstances, Mi-. Hood and I deem- 
ed it better to promise if he would hunt diligently for 
four days, that then we would give Hepburn a letter 
for Mr. Franklin, a compass, inform him what course 
to pursue, and let them proceed together to the fort. 

" On the I7th I went to conduct Michel to where 
Vaillant's blanket was left, and after walking about 
three miles, pointed out the hills to him at a distance. 
He proposed to remain out all night, and to hunt 
next day on his Avay back. He returned in the after- 
noon of tlie 18th, having found the blanket, together 
with a bag containing two pistols, and some other 
things ^\^hicli had been left beside it. We had some 
trij^e de roclie^ in the evening, but Mr. Hood, from the 
constant griping it produced, was unable to eat more 
than one or two spoonfuls. He was now so weak as 
to be scarcely able to sit up at the fireside, and com- 
j)lained that the least breeze of wind seemed to blow 
tliroui^h his frame. He also suffered much from cold 
durino^ the nio-ht. 

" On the 19th Michel refused to hunt, or even to as- 
sist in canying a log of wood to the fire, which was 
too heavy for Hepburn's strength and mine. Mr. 
Hood endeavored to point out to him the necessity 
and duty of exertion, and the cruelty of his cpiitting 



feanklin's first lai^d expedition. 223 

lis without leaving sometMng for our support ; but tlie 
discourse, far from producing any beneficial effect, 
seemed only to excite his anger, and amongst other ex- 
pressions he made use of the following remarkable one : 
" It is no use hunting, there are no animals, you had 
better kill and eat me." 

" October 20. — In the morning we again urged 
Michel to go a hunting, that he might if possible leave 
us some provision, to-morrow being the day appointed 
for his quitting us ; but he showed great unwilling- 
ness to go out, and lingered about the fire, under the 
pretense of cleaning his gun. After we had read the 
morning service, I went about noon to gather some 
t/ripe de roche, leaving Mr. Hood sitting before the tent 
at the fireside, arguing with Michel ; Hepburn was 
employed cutting down a tree at a short distance 
from the tent, being desirous of accumulating a quan- 
tity of fire- wood before he left us. A short time after 
I went out, I heard the report of a gun, and about ten 
minutes afterwards Hepburn called to me in a voice 
of great alarm, to come directly. When I arrived, I 
found poor Hood lying lifeless at the fireside, a ball 
having apparently entered his forehead. I was at first 
horror-struck with the idea, that in a fit of despond- 
ency he had hurried himself into the presence of his 
almighty Judge, by an act of his own hand ; but tha 
conduct of Michel soon gave rise to other thoughts, 
and excited suspicions which were confirmed when 
upon examining the body, I discovered that the shot 
had entered the back part of the head, and passed 
out at the forehead, and that the muzzle of the gun 
had been applied so close as to set fire to the night- 
cap behind. The gun, which was of the longest kind 
supplied to the Indians, could not have been placed 



224 DE. eichardson's naeeative. 

in a position to inflict sucli a wound, except by a sec- 
ond person. 

" Upon inquiring of Midi el liow it happened, lie 
replied, that Mr. Hood had sent him into the tent for 
a short gun, and that during his absence the long gun 
had gone off, he did not know whether by accident 
or not. He held the short gun in his hand at the 
time he was speaking to me. Hepburn afterwards 
informed me, that previous to the report of the gun, 
Mr Hood and Michel were speaking to each other in 
an elevated, angry tone ; that Mr. Hood being seated 
at the fireside, was hid from him by intervening wil- 
lows, but that on hearing the report he looked up, and 
saw Michel rising up from before the tent door, or 
just behind where Mr. Hood was seated, and then go- 
ing into the tent. Thinking that the gun had been 
discharged for the purpose of cleaning it, he did not 
go to the fire at first ; and when Michel called to him 
that Mr. Hood was dead, a considerable time had 
elapsed. Although I dared not openly to evince any 
suspicion that I thought Michel guilty of th^ deed, 
yet he repeatedly protested that he was inca^^^able of 
committing such an act, kept constantly on his guard, 
and carefully avoided leaving Hepburn and me to- 
gether. He was evidently afraid of permitting us to 
converse in private, and whenever Hepburn spoke, he 
inquired if he accused him of the murder. 

" We removed the body into a clump of willows 
behind the tent, and, returning to the fire, read the 
funeral service in addition to the evening prayers. 
The loss of a young officer, of such distinguished and 
varied talents and apj)lication, may be felt and duly 
appreciated by the eminent characters under whose 
command he had served ; but the calmness with which 



TEANKLIN S riEST LAND EXPEDITIOI^^. 225 

he contemplated the probable termination of a life of 
uncommon promise ; and the patience and fortitude 
with which he sustained, I may venture to say, unpar- 
alleled bodily sufferings, can only be known to the 
companions of his distresses. Biclcerstetli! s Scripture 
Hel]) was lying open beside the body, as if it had fall- 
en from his hand, and it is probable that he was read- 
ing it at the instant of his death. 

" We passed the night in the tent together without 
rest, every one being on his guard. 

" Next day, having determined on going to the Fort, 
we began to patch and prepare our clothes for the 
journey. We singed the hair off a part of the buffalo 
robe that belonged to Mr. Hood, and boiled and ate 
it. Michel tried to persuade me to go to the woods 
on the Coppermine River, and hunt for deer, instead 
of going to the Fort. In the afternoon a flock of par- 
tridges coming near the tent, he killed several, which 
he shared with us. 

^^ Thick snowy weather and a head wind prevented 
us from starting the following day, but on the morn- 
ing of the 23d we set out, carrying wdth us the re- 
mainder of the singed robe. Hepburn and Michel 
had each a gun, and I carried a small pistol, which 
Hepburn had loaded for me. In the course of the 
march, Michel alarmed us much by his gestures and 
conduct, wa-s constantly muttering to himself, express- 
ed an unwillingness to go to the Fort, and tried to 
persuade me to go to the southward to the woods, 
where he said he could maintain himself all the winter 
by killing deer. In consequence of this behavior, and 
the expression of his countenance, I requested him to 
leave us and to go to the southward by himself. This 
proposal increased his ill-nature, he threw out some 



226 DR. eichaedson's naeeativ^e. 

obscure hints of freeing himself from all restraint on 
the morrow ; and I overheard him muttering threats 
against Hepburn, whom he openly accused of having 
told stories ag^ainst him. He also for the first time, 
assumed such a tone of superiority in addressing me, as 
evinced that he considered us to be completely in his 
power, and he gave vent to several expressions of 
hatred towards the white people, or as he termed us 
in the idiom of the voyagers, the French, some of 
whom, he said, had killed and eaten his uncle and two 
of his relations. 

" In short, taking every circumstance of his conduct 
into consideration, I came to the conclusion, that he 
would attempt to destroy us on the first opj^ortunity 
that offered, and that he had hitherto abstained from 
doing so from his ignorance of the way to the Fort, 
but that he would never suffer us to go thither in 
company with him. Hepburn and I were not in a 
condition to resist even an open attack, nor could we 
by any device escape from him. Our united strength 
was far inferior to his, and, beside his gun, he was 
armed Avith two pistols, an Indian bayonet, and a knife. 
In the afternoon, coming to a rock on which there 
was some trq^e de rocJie^ he halted, and said he would 
gather it whilst we went on, and that he would soon • 
overtake us. 

"Hepburn and I were now left together for the 
first time since Mr. Hood's death, and he accpiainted 
me with several material circumstances which he had 
observed of Michel's behavior, and which confirmed 
me in the opinion tliat tliere was no safety for us ex- 
cept in his death, and lie offered to be the instrument 
of it. I detennined, however, as I was thoroughly 
convinced of the necessity of such a dreadful act, to 



feaitklin's fiest land expeditiok. 227 

take tlie wliole responsibility upon myself ; and imme- 
diately upon Michel's coming up, I put an end to liis 
life by shooting Mm tbrougli tlie head with a pistol. 
Had my own life alone been threatened, I would not 
have purchased it by such a measure ; but I considered 
myself as intrusted also with the protection of Hep- 
burn's, a man, who, by his humane attentions and de- 
votedness, had so endeared himself to me, that I felt 
more anxiety for his safety than for my own. Michel 
had gathered no ti'ipe de roclie, and it was evident to 
us that he had halted for the purpose of putting his 
gun in order, with the intention of attacking us, per- 
haps, whilst we were in the act of encamping. 

" I have dwelt in the preceding part of the narrative 
upon many circumstances of Michel's conduct, not for 
the purpose of aggravating his crime, but to put the 
reader in possession of the reasons that influenced me 
in depriving a fellow creature of life. Up to the 
period of his return to the tent, his conduct had been 
good and respectful to the officers, and in a conversa- 
tion between Captain Franklin, Mr. Hood, and myself, 
at Obstruction Rapid, it had been proposed to give 
him a reward upon our arrival at a post. His princi- 
ples, however, unsupported by a belief in the divine 
truths of Christianity, were unable to withstand the 
pressure of severe distress. His countrymen, the Iro- 
quois, are generally Christians, but he was totally un- 
instructed and ignorant of the duties inculcated by 
Christianity ; and from his long residence in the Indian 
country, seems to have imbibed, or retained, the rules 
of conduct which the southern Indians prescribe to 
themselves 

" On the two following days we had mild but thick 
snowy weather, and as the view was too limited to 



228 DR. Richardson's narrative. 

enable us to ]3reserYe a straight course, we remained 
encamped amongst a few Avillows and dwarf pines, 
about ilve miles from tlie tent. On tlie 26tli, tlie 
weatlier being clear and extremely cold, we resumed 
our marcL, wliicli was very painful from the depth of 
the sno^v, particularly on the margins of the small 
lakes that lay in our route. We frequently sunk 
under the load of our blankets/ and were obliged to 
assist each other in getting up. 

"We came in sisrht of the fort at dusk on the 29th, 
and it is impossible to describe our sensations, when 
on attaining the eminence that overlooks it, Ave be- 
held the smoke issuing from one of the chimneys. 
From not having met with any footsteps in the snow, 
as we drew nigh our once cheerful residence, we had 
been agitated by many melancholy forebodings. 
Upon entering the now desolate building, we had the 
satisfaction of embracing Captain Franklin, but no 
words can convey an idea of the filth and wretched- 
ness that met our eyes on looking around. Our own 
misery had stolen upon us by degrees, and we were 
accustomed to the contemplation of each other's ema- 
ciated figures, but the ghastly countenances, dilated 
eye-balls, and sepulchral voices of Mr. Franklin and 
those Avith him, were more than we could at first 
bear." 



The morning of October 31st was very cold, and 
matters did not improve at Foi-t Enterprise. At- 
tempts to kill deer and pai-tridges were unsuccessful, 
and Peltier and Samandre grew weaker; within t\vo 
days both Avere dead. 

On the 7th of November, the report of a musket 
Avas heard, and three Indians were seen close to the 



franklin's first land expedition. 229 

liouse. Eelief liad arrived at last ; Adams was in so 
weak a state tliat lie could liardly comprehend it, but 
on taking food he rapidly improved. 

" The Indians had left Akaitcho's encampment on the 
5th of November, having been sent by Mr. Back with all 
possible expedition, after he had arrived at their tents. 
They brought but a small supply of provisions, that 
they might travel quickly. Boudel-kell, the youngest 
of the Indians, after resting about an hour, returned 
to Akaitcho with the intelligence of our situation. 
The two others, '^ Crooked Foot and the Eat," remain- 
ed to take care of us. They set about everything 
with an activity that amazed us." 

On the 13th, the Indians became despondent at the 
non-arrival of supplies, and in the evening went of! 
after giving each of the white men a handful of pound- 
ed meat. On the 15th, Crooked Foot and two other 
Indians appeared, with two Indian women dragging 
provisions. 

On the 16th of November the travelers started to- 
wards Fort Providence, escorted by the Indians, who 
treated their charge with the greatest tenderness, pre- 
paring their en(5ainpinent and cooking for them. On 
the 26th they arrived safely at the abode of Akaitcho, 
and were received by the Indians in his tent with 
looks of compassion and profound silence of fifteen 
minutes duration, whereby they meant to express their 
condolence. Nothing was said until after the white 
men had tasted food. 

On the 8th of December, Franklin and Richardson 
took leave of Akaitcho and started south, conducted 
by Belanger and a Canadian who had been sent for 
them with sledges drawn by dogs. They arrived at 
Fort Providence on the 11th, and were there visited 



230 ARRIVAL AT FORT YORK. 

by Akaitcho and his band, with Adam, who had united 
with them. In the course of conversation Akaitcho 
said to Franklin, " I know you write down every oc- 
currence in your books; but probably you have only 
noticed the bad things we have said and done, and 
omitted to mention the good." 

Starting southward again, the party reached Moose- 
Deer Island on the 17th, where they found Mr. Back, 
who gave an affecting detail of the proceedings of his 
party since the separation. His narrative is but a 
continuation of the same kind of suffering by famine 
and cold. For days they had nothing to eat, and one 
of his men, Beauparlant, died on the way. 

On the 26th of May, after a five months' residence at 
Moose-Deer Island, the party started for Fort Chipew- 
yan, where they met Mr. Wentzel ; his excuse for fail- 
ing to keep a supply of provisions at Fort Enterprise 
was that he could not control the Indians. 

Franklin, Richardson, and Augustus arrived at Fort 
York on the 14th of July 1822. And thus termina- 
ted their long, fatiguing, and disastrous travels in 
North America, having Journeyed by water and by 
land (including their navigation of the Polar Sea,) 
five thousand ^ve hundred and fifty miles. 




W' 




■!f:ti?'tl|| 



CHAPTER XYI. 
FRANKLIN'S SECOND LAND EXPEDITION. 

In July 1825, Captain Franklin and his party, whicli 
included his old companions Messrs. Richardson and 
Back, arrived at Fort Chipewyan on his second expe- 
dition to the northern shores of America. In due 
time the whole party assembled on the banks of the 
Great Bear Lake River, v^hich flows out of that lake 
on the western side into the Mackenzie River, down 
which they were to descend to the sea in the follow- 
ing summer. 

On the 8th of August, Franklin embarked in the 
" Lion " for a preliminary trip down the Mackenzie. 
Back with three canoes accompanied him. Near a 
place called the " Ramparts " they fell in with a party 
of Hare Indians all neatly clothed in new leathern 
dresses, highly ornamented with beads and porcupine 
quills, both sexes alike, who brought fish, berries and 
meat. At Fort Good Hope, the lowest of the fur es- 
tablishments, Charles Dease, chief trader of the com- 
pany, received the travelers and prepared a meal for 
them at midnight. This fort was situated among the 
Indians whom Mackenzie called Quarrelers, but 
whom the traders named Loucheux or Squinters. 

Continuing on, the party came to what they sup- 
posed to be the Arctic Sea, and on Garry Island a tent 
U 231 



232 rORT FRANKLII^". 

was pitcted, and the flag which Franklin's deeply 
lamented wife had given him on parting, to be unfurled 
only in view of this sea, was hoisted. 

During Franklin's absence on this trip suitable 
buildings were erected and named Fort Franklin, and 
here the adventurers remained through the winter, 
which though severe was passed in comparative com- 
fort. The last swan flew to the south on the 5th of 
October, and the first one re-appeared on the 6th of 
May. Mosquitoes arrived on the 24th of May, and 
the first flower Avas gathered on the 27th. 

The boats were launched on the 15th of June, and 
the men appointed to their respective stations and 
furnished with blue water-proof uniforms and feathers. 
The day was closed by drinking a small quantity of 
rum reserved for the occasion, followed by a merry 
dance in which all joined. 

The adventurers left Fort Franklin on the 21st of 
June, leaving behind in charge of the fort only an old 
fisherman, who would not let them depart without 
giving his hearty though solitary cheer, which 
was returned in full chorus. Early in July they 
reached a broad part of the river where different 
channels branch off, and here the party divided. 
Franklin and Back in the Lion and Reliance took the 
western channel, and Richardson with two other 
boats took the easterly one. 

On the 7th of July Franklin's party reached the 
mouth of the river, and discovered on an island a mul- 
titude of tents and many Esquimaux. Articles 
for presents and trade having been selected, the boats 
sailed toward the tents with the ensigns flying, but 
touched ground when about a mile from the beach. 
Three kayaks instantly put off from the shore and 
others quickly followed, so that the whole space 



AT THE MOUTH OF THE MACKENZIE. 233 

between the island and the boats was covered with 
them. The leading kayaks where paddled by elderly 
men, whom Augustus invited to approach and receive 
a present, telling them that if a channel for ships 
were found they would come and open a trade. On 
hearing which they shouted for joy. 

A trade was now commenced and three hundred 
natives crowded around the boats, anxious to sell 
their bows, arrows, and spears, and although their 
importunities were troublesome, they showed no 
unfriendly disposition until an accident occurred 
which was productive of annoying consequences. 

^' A kayak being overset by one of the Lion's o^s, 
its owner was plunged into the water with his head 
in the mud, and apparently in danger of being drowned. 
We instantly extricated him from his unpleasant situ- 
ation, and took him into the boat until the water 
could be thrown out of his kayak ; and Augustus, 
seeing, him shivering with cold, wrapped him up in 
his own great-coat. At first he was exceedingly angry, 
but soon became reconciled to his situation ; and, look- 
ing about, discovered that we had many bales and 
other articles in the boat, which had been concealed 
from the people in the kayaks, by the coverings being 
caref ally spread over all. He soon began to ask for 
everything he saw, and expressed much displeasure 
on our refusing to comply with his demands ; he also, 
as we afterwards learned, excited the cupidity of 
others by his account of the inexhaustible riches in 
the Lion, and several of the younger men endeavored 
to get into both our boats, but we resisted all their 
attempts." 

Meantime the water having ebbed so that it was 
only knee deep where the boats lay, the natives seized 



234 THE EXPEDITION 11^ TROUBLE. 

the Reliance and dragged it to tlie beach. Franklin, 
who was in the Lion, says : — 

"Two of the most powerful men, jumping on board 
at the same time, seized me by the wrists and forced 
me to sit between them ; and as I shook them loose 
two or three times, a third Esquimaux took his station 
in front to catch my arm whenever I attempted to lift 
my gun, or the broad dagger which hung by my side. 
The whole way to the shore they kept repeating the 
word ' teyma^^ beating gently on my left breast with 
their hands, and pressing mine against their breasts. 
As we neared the beach, two oomiaks full of women 
arrived, and the Ueymas'' and vociferation were re- 
doubled. The Reliance was first brought to the shore, 
and the Lion close to her a few seconds afterward. 
The three men who held me now leaped ashore, and 
those Avho had remained in their canoes, taking them 
out of the water, carried them to a little distance. A 
numerous party then drawing their knives, and strip- 
ping themselves to the waist, ran to the Reliance, and, 
having first hauled her as far up as they could, began 
a regular pillage, handing the articles to the women, 
who, ranged in a row behind, quickly conveyed them 
out of sight." 

In short, after a furious contest for possession of the 
goods, during which knives were brandished in a most 
threatening manner, several of the men's clothes cut 
through, and the buttons of others torn from their 
coats. Lieutenant Back ordered his men to seize and 
level their muskets, but not to fire till the word was 
given. This had the desired effect, the whole crowd 
taking to their heels and hiding themselves behind the 
drift-timber on the beach. Franklin still thought it 
best to temporize so long as the boats were lying 



A BRAVE INTEEPEETEE. 235 

aground, and states his conviction, "considering tlie 
state of excitement to wliicli they had worked them- 
selves, that the first blood which his party might un 
fortunately have shed would instantly have been re 
veuged by the sacrifice of all their lives." 

The boats floated soon afterwards, and as they w^ere 
leaving, some of the natives walked along the beach 
and invited Augustus to a conference on shore. " I 
was unwilling to let him go," says Franklin, "but 
the brave little fellow entreated so earnestly that I 
would suffer him to land and reprove the Esquimaux 
for their conduct, that I at length consented." On 
his return, being desired to tell what he said to them, 
" he had told them," he said, 

" Your conduct has been very bad, and unlike that 
of all other Esquimaux. Some of you even stole from 
me, your countryman ; but that I do not mind ; I only 
regret that you should have treated in this violent 
manner the white people, who came solely to do you 
a kindness. My tribe were in the same unhappy 
state in which you now are before the white people 
came to Churchill, but at present they are supplied 
with everything they need, and you see that I am 
well clothed ; I get all that I want, and am very com- 
fortable. You cannot expect, after the transactions 
of this day, that these peo23le will ever bring goods to 
your country again, unless you show your contrition 
by restoring the stolen goods. The w^hite people 
love the Esquimaux, and wish to show them the same 
kindness that they bestow upon the Indians. Do not 
deceive yourselves, and suppose they are afraid of you ; 
I tell you they are not ; and that it is entirely owing to 
their humanity that many of you were not killed 
to-day ; for they have all guns, with which they can 



236 SECOND WESTTEE AT FOET FEANKLIN. 

destroy you either when near or at a distance. I 
also have a gun, and can assure you that if a white 
man had fallen I would have been the first to have 
revenged his death." 

In reply, the natives said that having never seen 
white men before they could not resist the temptation 
of stealing their pretty things ; they 23romised never 
to do the like again, and gave a proof of their sin- 
cerity by restoring the articles that had been stolen ; 
and thus, in an amicable manner, was the affray con- 
cluded. 

On the 13tli of July, Franklin started to examine 
the sea coast westerly of the Mackenzie River, and 
discovered on the 27th, the mouth of another large 
river which he named the Clarence. The extreme 
westerly point reached by the party was called Eeturn 
Keef, near longtitude 149^. From this place they 
started to return on the 18th of August. At this 
same time, as was subsequently ascertained, a boat 
party from Beech y\s Behring's Strait expedition, was 
only one hundred and sixty miles west of them on 
the same coast. 

Franklin and his party reached Fort Franklin in 
safety on the 21st of September, after traveling in 
three months two thousand and forty-eight miles. 
Here they found Dr. Richardson and his party, who 
had sailed eastward from the mouth of the Mackenzie 
River to the mouth of the Coppermine, and thence 
overland to the rendezvous, making altogether a 
journey of one thousand nine hundred and eighty 
miles. 

A second winter, and an intensely cold one, was 
passed pleasantly at Fort Franklin. At this same 
time Captain Parry was wintering amid the ice at a 



THE MAGNETIC POLE. 



237 



point further nortli, as related in former chapters. 
It chanced that the magnetic pole lay at this time 
between them. ^' For the same months," says Frank- 
lin, "at the interval of only one year, Captain Parry 
and myself were making hourly observations on two 
needles, the north ends of which pointed almost direct- 
ly towards each other, though our actual distance 
apart did not exceed eight hundred and fifty-five geo- 
graphical miles ; and while the needle of Port Bowen 
was increasing its westerly direction, ours was increas- 
ing its easterly, and the contrary — the variation being 
west at Port Bowen, and east at Fort Franklin — a 
beautiful and satisfactory proof of the solar influence 
on the daily variation." 

When spring opened Franklin and his companions 
started southward, and arrived in London in Septem- 
ber. 



^ ? ^ 







f ^s 



CHAPTER XYII. 

ARCTIC VOYAGES OF SCORESBY, CLAYER- 
ING AND SABINE, LYONS, AND BEECHEY. 

It must not be forgotten that while Ave are greatly 
indebted to scientific and amateur discoverers for our 
knowledge of the Arctic regions, we are also under 
obligations to practical seamen ; and among them no 
one has shown more zeal and intelligence than Capt., 
afterwards Dr., Scoresby. This gentleman, bred and 
reared, as it were, amid the tempests and snows of 
the North, and inheriting the love of adventure from 
his father who was also a captain in the whale ser- 
vice and gave his son a marine education, observed 
the phenomena of the Northern seas, with an enquir- 
ing and scientific eye unusual among those who pur- 
sue the rough life of a whaler. 

In 1 806, Capt. Scoresby, then acting as mate under 
his father who commanded a Greenland sliip, made a 
nearer approach to the North Pole than had hitherto 
been fully authenticated ; for the statements of the 
Dutch and other navigators who boast of liaving gone 
much nearer, are subject to great doubt as to the cor- 
rectness of their observations. 

Proceeding by Jan May en into the whale-bight, 
they found the waters encumbered by much broken 

238 



scoeesby's disco veeies. 239 

ice, tlirougli whicli they made tlieir way into an open 
sea so extensive that its termination conld not be dis- 
covered, but was estimated to extend four or five 
hundred square leagues. Advancing northward, they 
arrived at a very close continuous field of bay-ice, 
compacted by drifting fragments. Pushing their way 
through this by the most laborious exertions, they 
succeeded in reaching another open sea, unbounded, 
except by ice on the south and land in the distant 
east. 

As their object was to catch whales, and not to 
visit the Pole, they sailed in a north-west direction, 
swiftly crossing the short meridians of this parallel, 
and soon passed from the tenth degree of east to the 
eighth of west longitude. Their latitude was 79^-35 ^, 
and the sea was still open on every side. As they 
found no whales, they changed their tack, and ran 
east-north-east about three hundred miles, till they 
came to the nineteenth degree of east longitude and 
to latitude 81^-30' — only about ^ve hundred geo- 
graphical miles from the Pole. The sea lay open 
before them, and it was a great temptation to the 
young and daring sailor to run up and hang his ca23 
on the North Pole ; but the father, prudently consid- 
ering that he had been fitted, out by a mercantile con- 
cern to bring home a cargo of whale oil, decided not 
to gratify the ambition of his son, and turned back- 
wards to Hakluyt's Headland, where he was rewarded 
for his fidelity to his employers by catching twenty- 
four whales, from which were extracted two hundred 
and sixteen tons of oil. 

Capt. Scoresby, the younger, afterwards had abun- 
dant opportunity to gratify his love of adventure. 
In 1817 he made an excursion on Jan May en's Island. 



240 EXCURSION ON JAN MAYEN. 

The most striking feature was the mountain Beer- 
enberg, which rears its head 6870 feet above the sea ; 
and, being seen to the distance of thirty or forty 
leagues, proves a conspicuous landmark to the mar- 
iner. The first o])jects which attracted the eye were 
three magnificent icebergs, which rose to a very great 
height, stretching from the base of Beerenbei'g to the 
water's edge. Their usual greenish-gray color, diver- 
sified by snow-white patches resembling foam, and 
with black points of rock jutting out from the surface, 
gave them exactly the appearance of immense cas- 
cades, which in falling had been fixed by the power 
of frost. 

A party ascended a mountain which composed only 
the base of Beerenberg, yet was itself 1500 feet high. 
They were not long in discovering that the materials 
composing this eminence were entirely volcanic. They 
trod only upon ashes, slag, baked clay, and scoriae ; 
and whenever these substances rolled under their 
feet, the ground beneath made a sound like that of 
empty metallic vessels or vaulted caverns. On the 
summit they discovered a spacious crater, about 600 
feet deep, and 700 yards in diameter, the bottom of 
which was filled with alluvial matter, and which, being 
surrounded by rugged walls of red clay half-baked, 
had the apj)earance of a spacious castle. A spring of 
water penetrated its side by a subterranean cavern, 
and disappeared in the sand. No attempt was made 
to ascend Beerenberg, which towered in awful gran- 
deur, Avhite with snow, above the region of the clouds ; 
but at its feet was seen another crater surrounded by 
an immense accumulation of castellated lava. A large 
mass of iron was found, that had been smelted by the 
interior fires. The volcano was at this time entirely 



AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 241 

silent, but tlie next ^^ear Scoresbj saw smoke arising 
from it to a great height. 

In 1818 he landed near Mitre Cape, and undertook 
to reach the summit of the singularly insulated cliff 
of which it consists. Much of the ascent was over 
fragments of rock so loose that the foot in walking 
slid back every step. At one place the party found 
a ridge so steep that Scoresby could seat himself 
across it as on the back of a horse. They reached the 
summit, estimated as 3000 feet high, about midnight 
when the sun still shone on its snow-capped pinnacle, 
causing such a rapid melting that streams of water 
were flowing around them. 

The view from this summit is described by Scoresby 
as equally grand, extensive, and beautiful. On the 
east side were two finely-sheltered bays, while the sea, 
unruffled by a single breeze, formed an immense ex- 
panse to the west. The icebergs reared their fantastic 
forms almost on a level with the summits of the 
mountains, whose cavities they filled, while the sun 
illumined, but could not dissolve them. The valleys 
were enamelled with beds of snow and ice, one of 
which extended beyond reach of the eye. In the 
interior, mountains rose beyond mountains till they 
melted into distance. The cloudless canopy above, 
and the position of the party themselves, on the pin- 
nacle of a rock surrounded by tremendous precipices, 
conspired to render their situation equally singular 
and sublime. If a fragment was detached, either 
spontaneously or by design, it bounded from rock to 
rock, raising smoke at every bloAV and setting numerous 
other fragments in motion, till, amid showers of sxones, 
it reached the bottom of the mountain. 

The descent of the party was more difficult and 



242 A PERILOUS DESCENT. REFRACTION. 

perilous tlian the ascent. The stones sunk beneath 
then* steps and rolled down the mountain, and they 
were obliged to walk abreast ; otherwise the foremost 
mio^ht have been overwhelmed under the masses which 
those behind him dislodged. Finally, to the astonish- 
ment and alarm of the sailors beneath, Scoresby and 
his companions, in a part of their descent, slid down 
an almost perpendicular wall of ice, and arrived in 
safety at the ships. The beach was found nearly 
covered wdth the nests of terns, ducks, and other ten- 
ants of the Arctic air, in some of which there were 
young, over whom the parents kept watch, and, by 
loud cries and vehement gestures, sought to defend 
them against the gulls and other predatory tribes hov- 
erinc: around. Several sailors who had robbed these 
nests were followed to a considerable distance with 
loud and violent screams. 

In a subsequent whaling voyage along the coast of 
Greenland in the good ship Baffin, Scoresby made 
some important geographical discoveries, and his 
attention Avas particularly attracted to the refractive 
powder of the Polar atmosphere when acting on ice 
and other objects discerned through its medium. The 
rugged surface assumed the forms of castles, obelisks, 
and spires, which here and there were sometimes so 
linked together as to present the semblance of an ex- 
tensive and crowded city. At other times it resembled 
a forest of naked trees ; and fancy scarcely required 
an effort to identify its varieties with the productions 
of human art; — sculptured colossal forms, porticoes of 
rich and regular architecture, — even with the shapes 
of lions, bears, horses, and other animals. Ships were 
seen inverted, and suspended liigh in the air, and 
their hidls often so magnified as to resemble huge 



DESEETED HABITATIONS. 243 

edifices. Objects really beneatli the horizon were 
raised into view in a most extraordinary manner. It 
seems positively ascertained, that points in the coast 
of Greenland not above 4000 feet high, were seen at 
the distance of 160 miles. The extensive evaporation 
of the melting ices, with the nneqnal condensation 
produced by streams of cold air, are considered by 
Mr. Scoresby as the chief sources of this extraordinary 
refraction. 

The coasts of Greenland were found richer in plants 
and verdure than any others seen by our navigator 
within the Arctic circle, and almost deserving the 
name given to the country by its first discoverers. 
The grass run in one place to one foot in height, and 
there were meadows of several acres that appeared 
nearly equal to any in England. ISTowhere was a 
human being seen, but there were traces of recent and 
frequent habitations, not constructed of snow slabs 
like those of the Esquimaux, but dug deep in the 
ground, entered by a long winding passage, and roof- 
ed with a wooden frame overlaid with moss and earth. 
Near the hamlets were excavations in the earth, serv- 
ing as graves, where implements of hunting, found 
along with the bones of the deceased, proved the prev- 
alence here of the general belief of savage nature, 
that the employments of man in the future life will 
exactly resemble those of the present. 

Our navigator would have been happy to examine 
more of the Greenland coast, but the ship was not his 
own, and the object of his voyage being to catch 
whales, he was compelled to turn in another direction. 

Scoresby's discoveries and observations are appro- 
priately followed by those of Captains Edward Sabine 
and D. C. Clavering, which were made more in 



244 CRUISE OF THE GKIPER. 

behalf of science than geographical discovery. Sabine 
had long been interested in philosophical experiments 
on the shape of the earth by means of the pendulum, 
and under the patronage of the English Government 
had visited Sierra Leone, St. Thomas, Trinidad and 
other West India islands, and also New York, in the 
ship Pheasant commanded by Clavering. So con- 
genial was the society of these two gentlemen, that 
when it was proposed to Sabine to extend his obser- 
vations into the Polar regions, he requested that Clav- 
ering might command the gun-brig. Griper, which had 
been designated to convey him northward ; and he did 
so. The Griper sailed from the Nore, May 11th, 
1823, being duly furnished with the magnetic pendu- 
lum and various astronomical and scientific instru- 
ments. 

The first destination of the Griper was Hammerfest, 
near the North Cape of Norway, where she arrived 
on the 23d of June. This place, built on a small 
island named Qualoen, is in latitude 70^40^, and the 
dip of the needle here Capt. Sabine found to be 77^ 
40 ^ Hammerfest was only a hamlet containing some 
dozen houses, and our travelers were much pleased 
with the simple manners and kind hospitality of the 
people, who were delighted with the idea of a visit 
from a man-of-war, even if it was no larger than the 
little Griper. The women were fair and pretty and 
dressed nuich like English women. Eemote from the 
fashionable world, they were untainted with either 
its vices or follies. Reli odious influences controlled 
the hamlet and deviations from the rules of morality 
were exceedingly rare. The trade of the place was 
entirely in fish and oil, and reindeer the sole animal. 

Having finished his observation at Hammerfest, 



A CEUISE IN" HIGH LATITUDE. 245 

Sabine embarked on tlie 23d of June for Spitzbergen 
and vicinity, and on the 30tli anchored abreast of a 
small island, one of the inner ISTorways, and disem- 
barked the tents and instruments. While Sabine was 
making his observations here, Clavering determined 
to sail northward — to the North Pole if possible, — to 
see what he could see in the high latitudes. 

Accordingly, leaving six men to assist Sabine, and 
six months' provisions and fuel so that if anything 
should happen to the Griper the philosopher might 
not starve or freeze, and a launch in which he might 
make his way back to Hammerfest, the brave sailor 
steered due north on the 5th of July, with the North 
Pole for his destination. After sailing twenty-five 
miles he found himself embayed among ice. Pro- 
ceeding cautiously, he struck on the 6th a field of 
packed ice extending east and west as far as the eye 
could reach. Skirting the margin of this field in a 
line nearly west for sixty miles and perceiving no ap- 
pearance of an opening, he concluded it would be use- 
less to make further attempt to reach the Pole in this 
region, and accordingly returned to Capt. Sabine on 
the 11th of July. The highest latitude reached by 
Clavering was 80^20 ^ 

The magnetic pendulum having swung to the satis- 
faction of the philosopher and all due observations 
having been taken of the stars, the Griper was stored 
with, fifty reindeer for fresh provisions, and headed 
for Gael Hamkes' Bay, the highest point known on 
the eastern coast of Greenland, which they reached, 
after many impediments from ice on the 8th of 
August. A boat was sent on shore at a point which 
they called Cape Warren, 'Hhan which," Clavering 
says, " never was there a more desolate spot seen. 
Spitzbergen was a paradise to this place." 



246 ON THE EAST GREENLAND COAST. 

Proceeding along tlie coast to the nortliward, among 
floes of ice, tliey discovered two islands wliicli they 
named Pendulum Islands. Having passed them, 
Clavering advanced northward till blocked by ice in 
latitude 75*^12'. He had now reached what he con- 
ceived to be the north-east corner of Greenland, 
formed by an island which he named ^^ Shannon." 

Returnins: to the Pendulum Islands as the best 
place for Sabine to make his observations, Clavering 
left the Griper and the philoso23her there, and with 
his yawl, wherry, and a party of twenty, started off 
southward to see what he could see. At Cape War- 
ren they landed, and found traces of natives and several 
graves. Proceeding up an arm of the bay, a tent of 
seal skins was found on the beach, and two natives 
appeared on the heights, who seemed not to differ 
from the common race of the Esquimaux. They were 
shy at iirst, but their confidence was gradually won. 
The whole tribe numbered only twelve. Great was 
their surprise at the firing of guns and pistols. One 
of them was induced to fire a pistol, and he was so 
frightened that he slunk away into his tent, and the 
following morning it was found they had all departed 
leaving their tents and everything behind them, 
doubtless frightened away by the magical effects of 
gunpowder. 

On the 29th of August, Clavering and party return- 
ed to the Griper, and the philosopher having finished 
his experiments, all set sail on the 31st, coasting along 
the shore of Greenland till the 13th of September. 
The coast everywhere appeared mountainous, rising 
up in peaks from two to three thousand feet high. 
The ice floes and fields making it dangerous sailing 
near the shores, the Griper headed for Norway, where 



SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS SOLVED. 247 

they arrived on tlie 23d of September. At Dron- 
tlieim Fiord, Capt. Sabine landed and made further 
experiments ; the expedition then returned safely to 
England in December, after an absence of seven 
months, and after successfully accomplishing the re- 
sults for which it was planned. 

The scientific results of this and former expeditions 
of Captain Sabine and others, are thus summed up by 
him. " The attempt to determine the figure of the 
earth, by the variation of gravity at its surface, has 
been carried into full execution on an arc of the me- 
ridian of the greatest accessible extent, and the results 
which it has produced are seen to be consistent mth 
each other, in combinations too varied to admit of the 
correspondence being accidental. They are in fact 
the combinations of twenty-eight stations — thirteen of 
Captain Sabine's, eight of the French Savan's and seven 
of the British Survey. The result is that the length 
of a pendulum vibrating seconds at the equator is 
39.0152 inches. The increase of gravitation between 
the Equator and the Pole is 0.20245, and the ellip- 
ticity is ,4 " 

The second voyage of Capt. Lyon to the Arctic 
regions was -undertaken with a view to complete the 
land survey of the eastern portion of the north coast 
of North America, from the western shore of Melville 
Peninsula to Cape Turn-again, the eastern limit of 
Franklin's first jonrney. Although it did not result 
in any great discoveries, it illustrates the perils and 
brings out in bright relief the heroic character of 
Arctic navigators. The vessel designated for the 
service was the Griper. She sailed from England June 
19th, 1824. 

At the Orkney Islands two ponies were taken 



248 THE SJSTOW-BUJN^TINa. 

aboard ; also a cow and some sheep. Tlie cow was 
so sea-sick that she refused to eat, and was therefore 
eaten; but the ponies proved good sailors. 

Early in June, the Griper approached Resolution 
Island at the entrance of Hudson's Strait. Here 
Esquimaux were met who brought articles for barter. 
Lyon says, " I blush when I relate it, two of the fair 
sex actually disposed of their neither garments." 
On the 2 2d of August Southampton Island was in 
sight. When off Cape Pembroke the compasses were 
found to be nearly useless. 

As Lyon was taking a walk on shore one day he 
crossed an Esquimaux burial-place, and found the 
grave of a child slightly covered with stones, through 
which a snow-bunting had found its way to the neck 
of the child and there built its nest. This bird is 
considered by Arctic navigators as the robin of these 
dreary regions, having all the domestic virtues of the 
English I'edbreast ; its lively chirp and fearless con- 
fidence have rendered it respected by the most hun- 
gry sportsman. An English lady on reading this 
incident, was inspired with the following beautiful 
verses : — 

" Sweet bird ! the breast of innocence 
Hath fadeless charms for thee ; 
Althouarh the spirit long has fled, 
And lifeless clay it be ; 

Thou dreadest not to dwell with death. 

Secure from harm or ill. 
For on an infant's heart, thy nest 

Is wrought with fearless skill 

And, like our own familiar bird 

Tiiat seeks the human friend. 
Thou clie(;r'st tlie wandering seaman's thoughts 

With home, his aim and end." 

In Rowe's Welcome Bay, the fog, heavy sea, and 
shallow water combined, made navigation most peril- 



BAY OF god's lilERCY. 249 

ous. Of their situation here Lyon says: "I most 
reluctantly brought the Griper up with three bow- 
ers and a stream anchor, but not before we had 
shoaled to five and a half fathoms, the ship pitching 
bows under, and a tremendous sea running." The 
peril being imminent, the long boat was prepared to 
be hoisted out with the four small ones, and the 
officers and men drew lots with great composure for 
their respective boats, although two of the boats 
w^ould have been swamped the instant they were 
lowered. 

" Although few or none of us had any idea that 
we should survive the gale, we did not think that 
our comforts should be entirely neglected, and an 
order was therefore given to the men to put on their 
best and warmest clothing, to enable them to support 
life as long as possible. Every man, therefore, 
brought his bag on deck, and dressed himself ; and in 
the fine athletic forms which stood exposed before me, I 
did not see one muscle quiver, nor the slightest sign of 
alarm. And now that every thing in our power had 
been done, I called all hands aft, and to a merciful 
God offered prayers for our preservation. I thanked 
every one for their excellent conduct, and cautioned 
them, as we should in all probability soon appear 
before our Maker, to enter his presence as men 
resigned to their fate. We then all sat down in 
groups, and, sheltered from the wash of the sea by 
whatever we could find, many of us endeavored to 
obtain a little sleep. Never, perhaps, was witnessed 
a finer scene than on the deck of my little ship, when 
all hope of life had left us. God was merciful to us ; 
the tide almost miraculously fell no lower, the wind 
ceased and we were saved." This locality was very 
properly named Bay of God's Mercy. 



250 APPEOACH TO KAMCHATKA. 

A similar storm occurred in September, opposite 
tlie mouth of Wager's River, during which one 
anchor after another parted, and the vessel drifted 
away in the darkness, but escaped w^reck. The sit- 
uation, however, was still a precarious one, and with- 
out anchors and in a crippled condition, the ship was 
headed for England where it arrived in November. 

The object of Captain Beechey's expedition to 
Bering's Straits in 1825, was not so much for the 
purposes of discovery as to render assistance to Parry 
and Franklin, and especially to the latter — who was 
then on his second land expedition — should he be 
successful in working westward from the Mackenzie 
River to Kotzebue Sound, the place of rendezvous for 
both explorers. 

Beechey sailed from England in the sloop Blossom, 
May 19th, 1825, with instructions to proceed around 
Cape Horn, visit the English possessions in the 
Pacific Ocean, and arrive at the rendezvous by July, 
1826, there to remain till the approach of winter, in 
case neither Franklin nor Parry were heard from. 
Late in June 1826, the Blossom approached Petro- 
p^ulski, after having sailed seven hundred miles in a 
dense fog, which now cleared up and revealed the 
lofty mountains and volcanoes of Kamchatka. " Noth- 
ing could surpass the serenity of the evening, or the 
magnificence of the mountains capped with perennial 
snows, rising in majestic array above each other. The 
volcano emitted smoke occasionally, and from a 
sprinkling of black dots on the snow to the leeward 
of the crater, we concluded there had been a recent 
eruption." 

At Petropaulski, Beechey found dispatches announ- 
cing the return of the expedition under Parry. Cor- 



TIIE LAWRENCE-ISLANDEES. 251 

dial was tlie hospitality extended co the explorers 
by the citizens of the little town, and the pastor, in 
compliance with the injunctions of his grandfather, 
that he should send a calf to the captain of every 
English man-of-war that might arrive in the port, pre- 
sented Beechey with one of his own rearing. 

On the voyage north the Blossom stopped off 
Lawrence Island, and the natives immediately came 
out in boats, evidently anxious for a trade. One old 
lady amused the crew by her attempts to impose 
upon their credulity. She was seated upon a bag of 
peltry, from which she now and then drew out a skin, 
cautiously exhibited the best part of it with a look 
implying that it was of great value, repeatedly hugged 
it, and endeavored to coax her new acquaintances into 
a good bargain ; but it was easy to see that her furs 
would not bear close examination. The tricks of 
trade are not confined to civilization. Tobacco was 
the great want of the men, and needles and scissors 
of the women, and with both blue beads were arti- 
cles highly esteemed. They, however, seemed a little 
suspicious of the latter, and bit them, possibly to see 
if they were made of wax. The mode of salutation 
of these natives was by rubbing their noses against 
those of their friends and drawing the palms of their 
hands over the face. 

Beechey passed Bering's Strait, which separates 
the two great continents, on one of those beautiful 
still nights well known to all who have visited the 
Arctic regions, when the sky is without a cloud, and 
when the midnight sun, scarcely his own diameter 
below the horizon, tinges with a bright hue all the 
northern circle. The extremities of the two great 
continents were distinctly seen, and the islands in the 



252 CUSTOMS OF THE ALASKANS. 

strait clearly ascertained to be only three, as had 
been stated by Capt. Cook. 

A little north of Cape Prince of Wales, they were 
again visited by the natives who were eager for trade 
and willingly sold everything they had, except their 
bows and arrows. They were noisy and ever ready 
for a joke. They had a curious appendage to their 
dress, worn as an ornament in the shape of a bird's 
wing or the tail of a fox, tied to the end of a string 
fastened to their girdles, which dangled behind as 
they walked, giving them a ridiculous appearance, 
and probably occasioning the report, recorded by 
some traveler, that the people of this country have 
tails like dogs. To this dog-tail slander, they might 
perhaps retort that civilized women had camePs 
humps on their backs. 

At Schismareff Inlet were seen the lip ornaments 
common to this coast. They consist of pieces of ivory, 
stone or glass, formed with double heads, like sleeve 
buttons, which are inserted in holes bored in the 
under lip about half an inch below the corners of the 
mouth. The diameter of the orifice in those worn 
by adults is usually about half an inch, but Beechey 
saw one lip button made of polished jade stone, that 
was three inches in length and an inch and a half in. 
width. 

On the 22d of July, Beechey reached his rendezvous, 
Chamisso Island in Kotzebue Sound, but could find no 
traces of Franklin. 

Leaving the barge to keep in shore on the look-out 
for Franklin, Beechey sailed northward as far as Icy 
Cape. Finding indications of the ice closing in, he 
then returned to the sound and dispatched the barge 
under the command of Messrs. Elson and Smyth with 



WEECK OF THE BAEGE. 253 

instructions to trace tlie coast to tlie Nortli-east as far 
as they could penetrate. They succeeded in survey- 
ing one hundred and twenty-six miles of new coast, and 
were stopped by a long, low, projecting tongue of 
land which they named Pohit Barrow. Here they 
were within one hundred and forty-six miles of the 
extreme point reached by Franklin. 

By the middle of October the Esquimaux had all 
departed to their winter-quarters, the birds had 
migrated, the sea was rapidly being frozen, and 
Beechey sailed for San Francisco where he wintered. 

In the following season, Beechey returned to 
Chamisso Island, where he anchored August 5th. 
Here the barge was again called into requisition, and 
under command of Lieutenant Belcher, it started 
north and reached a point some forty miles easterly 
of Icy Cape, but could go no further in consequence 
of the ice. On the way back Belcher stopped at 
Choris Peninsula to erect an observatory. While 
all the part)^ but two were on shore, a gale sprung 
up. The crew were immediately ordered aboard and 
one trip of the small boat landed three persons on 
the barge, but an attempt to reach it a second time 
was unsuccessful. The vessel soon sunk in shallow 
water, and two of her crew were drowned in attempt- 
ing to reach shore. The others retreated to the 
rigging, but one fell and perished; the other two 
were rescued after the sea subsided. 

Meantime, Beechey had been on an excursion in the 
Blossom, and when returning to the rendezvous, dis- 
covered with telescopes a flag flying on the coast and 
two men waving white cloths. The possibility of its 
being Franklin's party was the first wish of his mind ; 
but this w^as soon dispelled as a nearer view of the 



254 



SKIRMISHES WITH THE NATIVES. 



flag proved it to be the ensign of his own boat 
hoisted Avith the union downward indicative of dis- 
tress, and Belcher and his surviving men were soon rec- 
ognized and cared for. They had experienced some 
trouble with the natives after the loss of their barge, 
and subsequently the crew of the Blossom had skir- 
mishes, Avifch them in which several of the seamen 
were wounded by arrows, and one or more of the 
Esquimaux killed. Beechey did not punish them as 
they deserved, as he was unwilling to awaken senti- 
ments which might prove injurious to other Euro- 
peans. 

The balance of the season was passed in futile 
attempts to find Franklin, and grieved and disap- 
pointed, Capt. Beechey left Kotzebue's Sound, Oct. 6th, 
1827 ; but did not arrive in England till the autumn 
of 1828, having been absent three and a half years. 




CHAPTER XVIII. 
PARRY'S POLAR VOYAGE.^ 

The scheme of reacliing tlie Pole by traveling over 
the frozen surface of the ocean was first suggested by- 
Mr. Scoresby. He believed that the Polar Sea in 
some meridians presented one continuous sheet of tol- 
erably smooth ice, which could be traversed without 
great difficulty. The idea was taken up by Capt. 
Parry, whose brilliant voyages to the North-west had 
led him to suspect that further progress in that di- 
rection was hopeless, and an expedition was fitted out 
which left England, April 4th, 1827, in the sloop 
Hecla. 

The plan was to proceed in this vessel as far north 
as possible, when a portion of the crew were to leave 
the ship, with two boats on runners, which were to 
be dragged or navigated as circumstances might 
admit, over the unknown and desolate expanse be- 
tween Spitzbergen and the Pole. These boats were 
twenty feet long and seven broad, with runners at- 
tached to each side of the keel so that they could be 
drawn on the ice like sleds. Wheels were also taken 
along for use, if practicable. 

At Hammerfest eight noble reindeer were taken 
on board ship, with which the adventurers hoped to 
make a stage journey to the Pole. As each boat with 

255 



256 PAEEY AIS^D HIS DEER. 

its cargo weiglied nearly two tons, a four-in-hand team 
would certainly be an aid on the icy road. At all events 
the deer served to beguile the tediousness of the pas- 
sage to Spitzbergen, and all hands became much attach- 
ed to them. The regular allowance of clean moss for 
each deer was four pounds daily, but in case of neces- 
sity they would go five or six days without prov- 
ender and not suffer materially. The adaption of these 
animals to the Frigid Zone is wonderful. Snow is 
their favorite drink, — if the bull may be pardoned, — ■ 
and cold, hard ice is as comfortable and ehistic a bed 
as they desire; at least they never complain wlien fur- 
nished with such sleeping accommodations, canopied 
over by the vaulted arch of heaven. 

Parry was enamored with his deer — the only draw- 
back to his happiness being the thought that dire ne- 
cessity might compel him and his crew to eat them. 

The Hecla rounded Hakluyt's Headland May 14th, 
and met with a tremendous gale which almost lay the 
ship on her beam ends, and tossed her like a feather ; 
and she was soon comj)letely beset by a large iloe 
which carried her eastward. After release from this 
tedious imj)risonment of twenty-four days, came along 
and anxious search for a secure harbor. 

At length the Hecla was anchored in a fine harbor 
which the Dutch had named Treurenberg Bay, but 
now rechristened as Hecla Cove. Numerous graves 
were found on the shore. The bodies had been depos- 
ited in oblong boxes and covered with stones : a board 
near the head recording the name of the deceased and 
the time of his death. Oue was dated as f^ir back as 
1G90, and Parry was right in conjecturing that the 
Dutch name of the bay was derived from treuren^ to 
lament, on account of the mortality w^hich had oc- 



THE STAET FOE THE POLE. 257 

curred here. This was not encouraging to the party 
who were to remain with the ship, but there 
was no time to be lost, and brave sailors must not be 
frightened by graves or ghostly shadows. 

On the 2 2d of June the excursion party left the 
ship amid the cheers of their associates. The boats 
were severally commanded by Parry and James C 
Ross. Lt. Crozier, afterwards second in command of 
the lost Franklin expedition, was one of the officers 
who remained with the Hecla. Provision for seventy 
days were taken along, but the " eight tiny reindeer " 
were left behind, with the wheels. Parry having seeti 
enough of the rugged surface of the ice to convince 
him that they would be of more use to Santa Claus 
than to himself What became of these animals which 
had so much interested Parry, he omits to mention. 
The stern realities of the Northern Sea pr9bably 
drove all sentimentalism from his mind. 

For eighty miles they proceeded due north, sailing 
slowly through a calm and smooth open sea. In lati- 
tude 81^12^51^^ they were stopped by slush ice, which 
could neither be walked nor sailed over, but was to be 
passed by the two methods alternately. Here com- 
menced the real labor of their fatiguing and monot- 
onous journey. 

The first step was to convert night into day ; to 
begin their journey in the evening and end it in the 
morning. Thus their notions of night and day became 
inverted. They rose in what they called the morning, 
but which was really late in the evening, and having 
performed their devotions, breakfasted on warm co- 
coa and biscuit. They then drew on their boots, 
usually either wet or hard frozen ; and which, though 
perfectly dried, would have been equally soaked in 



258 A JOURNEY ON ICE. 

fifteen minutes. The party then traveled five or six 
hours, and a little after midnight stopped to dine. 

They now performed an equal journey in what was 
called the afternoon ; and in the evening, that is, at 
an advanced morning hour, halted as for the night. 
They then applied themselves to obtain rest and 
comfort, put on dry stockings and fur-boots, cooked 
something warm for supper, smoked their pipes, told 
over their exploits, and, forgetting the toils of the 
day, enjoyed an interv^al of ease and gayety. Then, 
wrapping themselves in their fur-cloaks, they lay down 
in the boat, rather too close together perhaps, but 
with very tolerable comfort. The sound of a bugle 
roused them at night to their breakfast of cocoa, and 
to a repetition of the same round. 

Instead of a smooth, level surface, which they ex- 
pected to find, over which a coach might be driven, 
the ice consisted of small, loose and rugged masses, 
compelling the men to make two or three trips in 
order to bring up the boats and baggage. One day 
during heavy rain they advanced but half a mile in 
four hours. In short, it was found, by an observation 
taken at midnight on the 30th of June, that since they 
started on the ice, on the 25th, they had progressed 
northward only about twelve miles. All expectation of 
reaching the Pole was now relinquished, but hopes of 
reachino; the 83d deo^ree were entertained. 

The i)arty came at length to smoother ice and larger 
floes, and making better progress, persevered till the 
20th of July, when they were mortified to find that 
their latitude was less than five miles to the north- 
ward of where it was on the l7th, although they had 
certainly traveled twelve miles in that direction. Parry 
began now to suspect that the ice was floating south- 



DEEFTINa SOUTH. 259 

ward, and tliat they were in the condition of the frog 
jumping out of a well, which jumped three feet and 
fell back two. Such a suspicion was disheartening to 
the officers, but was not communicated to the men 
who often laughingly remarked, "We are a long time 
getting to this eighty-third degree." 

On the 26th they were only one mile further north 
than they were on the 21st, though they had in that 
time traveled northward twenty-three miles ; thus it 
was ascertained that the southern drift of the ice was 
at the rate of over four miles per day. Parry con- 
cluded it was useless to persevere in the attempt even 
to reach the 83d parallel, and communicated the facts 
and his intentions to the men. Great had been their 
exertions, and great was their disappointment. They 
consoled themselves however with the belief that they 
had gone further north than any previous explorers. 
The highest latitude reached was 82*^40', which is a 
trifle farther north than the Polaris penetrated on her 
late trip. Their greatest distance from the Hecla was 
only one hundred and seventy-two miles, but to ac- 
complish it they had probably traveled far enough to 
reach the Pole, as they had so many times trebled 
their track. 

Nothing remarkable occurred on the return. 
It was no small satisfaction to the explorers to know 
that there would be no backsliding and that every 
mile of advance southward would count two or three 
miles. They arrived at Hecla Cove on the 21st of 
August, where they were received, says Parry, " with 
that warm and cordial welcome which can be felt 
but not described. Considering our constant expos- 
ure to wet, cold and fatigue, our stockings having 
been generally drenched in snow water for twelve 



260 



EETURN TO HECLA COVE. 



lioiirs out of every twenty-four, I had great reason 
to be thankful for the excellent health in which upon 
the whole we reached the ship." 

The Heel a soon afterward sailed for England, and 
thus ended the first and only attempt that has been 
made to penetrate to the Pole over the frozen surface 
of the deep. All the prowess, energy, and hardihood 
of British seamen were exerted to the utmost without 
making even an approach towards the fulfillment of 
their object. The late Captaiii Hall hoped to reach 
the Pole by a sled journey over the ice and land, 
starting from the highest point that the Polaris could 
obtain; but there is little doubt that if he had lived 
to make the attempt, it would have proved an unsuc- 
cessful if not disastrous one. The Pole is a reality, 
and some benefit to science would accrue from obser- 
vations taken thereon ; but we may as well conclude 
that when God gave man dominion over the Avhole 
earth, that locality was not included or was considered 
unworthy of his presence. 




CHAPTER XIX. 

ARCTIC EXPEDITION OF JOHN AND JAMES 

C. ROSS. 

John Ross, whose Expedition made under the au- 
spices of the British Admiralty in 1818 was sorely 
criticised by the press and pronounced a failure, was 
not content to remain in inglorious ease, but felt an 
ambition so common to adventurers, to try his fortune 
once more. Ross's faith in the North-west passage never 
was very great ; and the second expedition seems to 
have been undertaken more from a love of adventure 
and a desire to retrieve his good name, than from any 
well-grounded hope of success in its professed object. 
The perseverance and energy displayed in carrying it 
out were worthy of better results than it actually ac- 
complished. 

From his experience in his first Arctic adventure, 
and from careful study of the voyages of others, Ross 
became convinced that a small steamship would make 
better headway among the floes and fields of ice than 
a sailing vessel ; and accordingly presented his views 
to the Admiralty as early as 1827, asking government 
aid for his new project. This proposal was not favor- 
ably received, and he then applied to his friend. Sir 
Felix Booth, a wealthy gentleman, who listened kindly 
to his statements, but finally decided not to embark 

261 



262 SECOND EXPEDITION OF JOHN ROSS. 

in the enterprise, lest it might be construed by the 
public as a mere mercantile speculation, in hopes of 
securing the reward of £20,000 offered by Parliament 
for the discovery of the North-west passage. 

Not baffled by this second rebviff, Ross again applied 
to the Admiralty, submitting a modified, and as he 
thought, an improved plan of navigating the Arctic 
Seas by means of steam. The decided answer of the 
Admiralty was : — " Government does not intend to 
send out any more expeditions on this enquiry." 

Soon after this Parliament revoked its offer of £20,- 
000, which had tempted so many adventurers into the 
Polar Seas. This removed Booth's objection to aiding 
Ross, and he advanced the money necessary to buy 
and fit out the Victory, a steamer of one hundred and 
fifty tons. The whole cost was £17,000. 

With his nephew, James Clark Ross, as commander, a 
purser, surgeon, and a crew of seventeen, Ross steamed 
down the Thames on the 23d of May, 1829. The steam 
fixtures did not prove to be as efficient as he expected, 
and hiss main reliance for the trans-atlantic voyage and 
indeed for the whole expedition, was upon sails. 

On the 23d of July the Victory came to anchor in 
the harbor of Holsteinberg, a Danish settlement on the 
coast of Greenland, and was soon surrounded by ca- 
noes filled with Esquimaux, among whom were two 
whites clothed like the natives, who proved to be Mr. 
Kail, the governor, and Mr. Kijer, a clergyman, both 
well educated gentlemen who had resided in the country 
for six years. At the house of the latter the officers of 
the Victory were treated with great kindness, Mrs. Kijer 
doing the honors at the table, and Esquimaux girls, neat- 
ly dressed in native costume, doing the service. The 
settlement consisted of the governor's and clergyman's 



LIFE AT HOLSTEINBERG. 263 

houses, a church, two store-houses, and about forty Es- 
quimaux huts. The church was a neat simple struc- 
ture, surmounted with a small steeple, and having an 
audience-room furnished with an organ and seats 
for two hundred persons. Holsteinberg is a roman- 
tic and interesting place, but the governor and 
clergyman must have led self-denying lives in this 
solitude, away from all the social privileges of civili- 
zation. Peace and happiness are however of no coun- 
try or situation, and here in this narrow and appa- 
rently contented circle they seemed to exist in per- 
fection. No disorderly or immoral conduct was 
noticed among the natives ; and Mr. Kijer represented 
the Greenlanders as so pacific in their dispositions 
that quarrels among them were very rare. 

As an instance of their honesty, Capt. Eoss relates 
that on the morning of his departure from Holstein- 
berg, a poor Esquimaux came alongside of the Victory, 
bringing an oar which had been lost from one of the 
boats, and adds : " I know not how far the exertions 
of the worthy clergyman deserve to share in the merit 
of this and the other good conduct which we witnessed, 
but be this as it may, I do but justice to the natural 
character of this race, almost everywhere in our experi- 
ence, to say that they are among the most w^orthy 
of all the rude tribes yet known to our voyagers in 
any part of the world." 

The singing of the Esquimaux girls in church as- 
tonished and delighted the captain, and he was assured 
that they learned to sing the most refined sacred mu- 
sic of the German school with great facility, and the 
Moravian missionaries have made music a powerful 
auxiliary in religious instruction and civilization. 
Some of the Esquimaux have not only been taught 

16 



264 SECOND EXPEDITION OF JOHN ROSS. 

to sing, but to play, and construct their own instru- 
ments. 

On the 7th of August the Victory steamed into 
Lancaster Sound. The sea was covered with minute 
marine animals and ducks, and gulls were in sight; 
no ice of any kind was to be seen. Ross proceeded 
westerly, till he reached Prince Regent Inlet, into 
which he turned his ship and sailed southerly in search 
of the place where the Fury was wrecked, hoping to 
replenish his stock of provisions from her stores. 

On the 13th of August the Victory entered a bay, 
which was christened Adelaide in honor of the Duchess 
of Clarence, it being her birth-day. On the afternoon 
of the next day. Commander Ross, who had been the 
lieutenant of the Fury, recognized a high-projecting 
precipice as being some three miles from the wreck, 
for which all eyes were looking ; and, an hour after- 
ward, the tents were seen on the mound where the 
shipwrecked stores had been deposited. The same 
evening the Victory was safely moored in an ice har- 
bor, within a quarter of a mile of the coveted goods. 

The coast was found almost lined with coal; and one 
tent — the mess-tent of the Fury's officers — remained 
whole, though it was evident the bears had paid it 
frequent visits. A pocket near the door of this tent, 
in which Commander Ross had left his memorandum- 
book, was missing. The preserved meats and vegeta- 
bles were found in good condition. The canisters 
had been piled up in two heaps, and though exposed 
to all the vicissitudes of the climate for four years, 
they had not suffered in the slightest degree. There 
had been no water to rust them, and the security of 
the joinings had prevented the bears from smelling 
the contents. Had they known the feast of fat things 
contained within those shining tins, not much would 



THE WRECK OF THE FURY. 265 

have remained for the crew of the Victory. The wine, 
sugar, bread, flour, and cocoa, were found in equally 
good condition. The lime-juice and the pickles had 
not suffered much, and even the salis were not only 
dry, but looked as if they had never been wet. Not 
a trace of the hull of the Fury was to be found. 

The stores, not the wreck, were what Capt. Koss 
wanted. With great delight the crew set about em- 
barking a sufficiency of stores to complete the equip- 
ment of the Victory for over two years. This fitting 
out a vessel in an abandoned region of ice and rocks, 
was a novel scene. Without money and without price 
the crew carried on board the Victory canister after 
canister of provisions, and yet all they could store away 
on board seemed scarcely to diminish the pile. Ten 
tons of coal, some anchors, and some carpenter's stores 
were also appropriated. The powder magazine had 
become unroofed, but the patent cases had kept the 
powder perfectly dry, and with a portion of this the 
new outfit was ended. 

Captain Ross' plan was to make a thorough survey 
of Prince Regent's Inlet, and ascertain whether there 
was any outlet from it to the Polar Sea ; he therefore 
proceeded from Fury Beach southward. The voyage 
now began to acquire its peculiar interest as the Victory 
was traversing a comparatively unknown region. The 
land seemed to extend in a south-west direction con- 
tinuously, and the captain gave it the name of Boothia, 
in honor of his patron. Many whales came close to 
the ship, thus proving that they had never had a taste 
of the harpoon. 

The geological structure was limestone, containing 
shells. Some sandstone and gneiss were also observed, 
and in many of the small bays, there were accumula- 



266 SECOND EXPEDITION OF JOHN EOSS. 

tions of sand. The soundings were in clay, so tough 
as to require great force to extract the lead from it. 
There was no wood ; a heath with stems about an inch 
thick, being the largest plant growing. 

A harbor was found sufficiently deep and large to 
accommodate the whole British navy, and to this was 
given the name of Elizabeth, in compliment to a sis- 
ter of Mr. Booth. In many parts of it there were 
five fathoms of water close to rocks or shore, where 
vessels might lie as at a pier ; and from marks on the 
rocks it was judged that the spring-tide rose eight 
feet. Near the sea the land was generally bare, but 
inland there were plains and valleys of considerable 
extent covered with vegetation. In the valleys were 
numerous lakes, some of them two miles long, and 
all well stocked with fish. As the season advanced 
navigation became more and more difficult and haz- 
ardous. The Victory drawing but a few feet of water, 
had great advantage in navigating the Arctic Seas, but 
still her perils were many. Captain Boss thus graph- 
ically describes the appearance of those seas. 

" To those who have not seen a northern ocean in 
winter, tlie term ice, exciting but the recollection of 
what they know of it at rest in an inkind lake, con- 
veys no idea of what it is the fate of the Arc- 
tic navigator to witness. But let them remember that 
ice is stone, a floating rock in a stream, a promontory 
or an island when aground, not less solid than if it 
were granite. Then let them imagine, if they can, 
these mountains of crystal, hurled through a narrow 
strait by a rapid tide ; meeting as mountains would 
meet, with the noise of thunder, breaking from each 
other precipices, ' huge fragments, or rending each 
other asunder, till, losing their former equilibrium, 



FROZEN IN. 267 

they fall over headlong, lifting the sea around in break- 
ers, and whirling it in eddies, while the flatter fields 
of ice, forced against these masses, or against the 
rocks by the wind and stream, rise out of the sea till 
they fall back on themselves, adding to the indescrib- 
able commotion and noise which attend these occur- 
rences." 

On the last day of September Captain Ross deter- 
mined that further progress was impossible for the 
season, and that his next duty was to look out for 
winter quarters. An inevitable detention among im- 
movable ice made his men feel like captives upon 
whom the prison doors were being closed for long and 
weary months. Making an inland excursion, he as- 
cended a high hill to take a general survey of the sit- 
uation. At the south-west appeared a succession of 
uniform low; hill, beyond which no water was to be 
seen. In the interior he could see even through the 
snow, that the plains were covered with vegetation. 
Many tracks of hares were seen, and some of these an- 
imals were shot, which were at this early date quite 
white, showing that their change in color is not the 
effect of temperature, but a prospective arrangement 
for meeting the cold of winter. There were also 
many Esquimaux traps with a great number of cairns 
or stones, which at a distance resemble men, and are 
erected by the Esquimaux for the purpose of fright- 
ening the deer and turning them within reach. 

In the meantime the crew were set to work unlad- 
ing the ship of the steam engine and fixtures which 
had proved an incumbrance. Thenceforth the Victory 
was simply a sailing vessel. 

By October 8th there was not an atom of water 
to be seen anywhere, and excepting the protrud- 



268 SECOND EXPEDITION OF JOHN ROSS. 

ing point of some dark rock, nothing but one dazzling 
and monotonous, dull and wearisome extent of snow 
was visible. Captain Ross describes the effect of this 
uniformity, silence and death as paralyzing to both 
body and mind. Nothing moves, nothing changes ; 
all is forever the same — cheerless, cold, and silent. 

The Victory had not made the progress expected 
of her, but she went into winter quarters one hundred 
and sixty-six miles beyond the wrecking-ground of 
the Fury. An examination of the provisions and 
fuel gave the comforting assurance that there was 
enough of both to suppy all wants for more than two 
years ; and officers and crew settled down for a long 
winter's repose. 

The record of the winter is monotonous. Captain 
Ross studied carefully the effects of the cold upon him- 
self and men, and came to the conclusion that there 
is great difference in individuals as to their power of 
generating heat. A ruddy, elastic, florid, or clear 
complexioncd man, is secured by nature against cold ; 
while the pale, sallow, and melancholy-looking, are not 
the men for an Arctic voyage. 

The deck of the Victory being covered with 
snow to the depth of two-and-a-half feet, it was trod 
down till it became a solid mass, and was then cov- 
ered with sand, so as to have the appearance of a solid 
gravel walk. Above this a roof Avas built, and the 
sides of the vessel were banked with snow up to the 
roof so as to form a perfect shelter from the wind and 
ward off much of the extreme cold. On this deck the 
men walked for exercise when the cold was too exces- 
sive for them to venture abroad. From six o'clock 
in the evening till nine, the men were required to 
attend school, and on Sunday prayers were offered 



LIFE AT FELIX HARBOR. 269 

and a sermon read ; the good effects of their educa- 
tional and reUgious duties were manifest in the conduct 
of the men, who seemed to feel that they belonged to 
one family, and evinced much mutual kindness and 
a remarkable propriety of deportment. The nse of 
spirituous liquors was abandoned, and even the habit 
of swearing was broken up. 

Christmas was celebrated with a liberal dinner, of 
which roast beef formed the essential and orthodox 
portion. The stores from the Fury came into play 
on this day, as they included mince pies and iced 
cherry brandy. Flags were displayed from the ship 
and shore, the church service allotted for the day read, 
and one and all enjoyed the festival more probably 
than those whose lives of uniform ease, peace, and 
luxury, render them insensible to hard- won enjoyment. 
The thermometer ranged from 18 to 22 below zero. 

January 9th, some Esquimaux appearing on the 
shore, the officers went out to meet them and found 
them armed with spears and knives. Captain Ross 
hailed them with the Esquimaux salutation, timay 
tima, and was answered by a general shout of the 
same kind, the natives throwing their weapons into 
the air, and extending their arms. An embrace on 
the part of Captain Ross, and a stroking of the dress 
of the Esquimaux, the sign of friendship, established 
unhesitating confidence, which they manifested in the 
great delight apparent on their countenances, and in 
laughing, clamor, and strange gestures. They were 
all well dressed in excellent deer-skins, the upper gar- 
ments double and encircling the body, and extending 
from the chin to the middle of the thigh. Of the two 
skins which formed this double dress, the inner one 
had the hair next to the body, and the outer one in 



270 SECOND EXPEDITION OF JOHNT ROSS. 

a reverse direction. The trousers were also of deer 
skin, reaching low on the leg, and each had on two 
pairs of boots, with the hairy side of both turned in- 
ward. With this immense superstructure of clothing, 
they looked much larger than they really were, and 
more like woodchucks walking on their hind legs 
than men. Their cheeks were plump, and of as rosy 
a color as possible under so dark a skin. Their faces 
were good-natured, their eyes dark, nose small, and the 
hair black and cut short, and carefully arranged. 

Three of these Esquimaux being introduced into 
the cabin, were greatly delighted with some engrav- 
ings of their countrymen, which they instantly re- 
cognized as portraits of their race. The sight of them- 
selves in a looking-glass excited their greatest aston- 
ishment. They did not relish the preserved meat, but 
being offered some oil, drank it with great gusto. 
Thus admirably are the tastes of all men adapted to 
the food within their reach, and their views of happi- 
ness to the means provided for their enjoyment. A 
Hand thus spreads for His creatures a table in the wil- 
derness. 

The next day Captain Ross visited the village of 
these Esquimaux, about two-and-a-half miles distant, 
which he found to consist of twelve snow-huts, having 
the appearence of inverted basins. Each had a long 
crooked appendage, which formed the entrance, and 
at its mouth sat the women and children. This pas- 
sage, always long and generally crooked, led to the 
principal apartment. Opposite the doorway there was 
a bank of snow about two-and-a-half feet high, level 
at tlie top, and covered with skins, forming the gen- 
eral bed, or sleeping-place for the whole. At the end 
of this snow-couch sat the mistress of the home, op- 



KING William's land. 271 

posite to the lamp, which being of moss and oil, as is 
the universal custom^ gave enough light and heat to 
render the apartment comfortable. Over the lamp 
was the cooking-dish of stone, containing the flesh of 
deer and seals, cooking in oil. Dresses, implements, 
and provisions lay about in unspeakable confusion, as 
order is not one of the Esquimaux virtues. 

A large oval piece of clear ice, fixed about half way 
up on the eastern side of the roof, served to admit ex- 
ternal light to their snow-houses. In the entrance 
passage, there was a little ante-chamber, arranged for the 
comfort of the dogs, and the mouth of the entrance 
was changed with each change of wind, so as always 
to open to the leeward. 

The females were certainly not beautiful, but, what 
is better, were well behaved. All above thirteen 
years of age seemed to be married, and there were 
three or four such in every house — apparently three 
young wives in a house where there was one old one, 
a modification of Mormonism, which Brig ham Young 
will do well to consider. All were tattooed to a 
greater or less extent, chiefly on the brow and on each 
side of the mouth and chin. 

In the following spring, Ross, '^ the nephew of his 
uncle," and really the enterprising genius of the ex- 
pedition, started off on a sledge journey of nearly a 
month, during which he penetrated westward two 
himdred miles, and discovered King William's Sound 
and King William's Land. 

The Victory was held fast in the ice for eleven 
months, and only released on the 17th of September, 
1830. This long imprisonment through the summer 
months was enough to discourage any but Arctic adven- 
turers. Their sledge journeys had satisfied them that 



272 SECOND EXPEDITION OF JOHN ROSS. 

there was no western passage from Kegent's Inlet, to 
the south of their position, and it was with delight that 
they once more found themselves free to retrace their 
course northward. After advancing about three miles 
they encountered a field of ice, through which they 
vainly endeavored to saw their way. On the 30th of 
September there was no water to be seen. On all 
sides lay snow and ice. They did not, however, relin- 
quish their endeavors, but spent the month of Octo- 
ber in sawing through ice which was constantly in- 
creasing in thickness. They struggled like drowning 
men, but were opposed by King Frost, who is a mighty 
power in those regions. 

Obliged at last to submit to his sovereignty, the 
utter monotony of their situation pressed upon them 
with increasing severity, and they were led to envy 
the Esquimaux, to whom eating and sleeping was the 
whole of life. 

In the folloAving spring James Koss started off on a 
sledge excursion, to ascertain the precise location of the 
Magnetic Pole. In this he was successful. In lati- 
tude 70° 5' 17", and longitude 96° 46' 45" west, he found 
the dip of his needle to be 89° 59', being thus within 
one minute of vertical. On this spot he erected a 
cairn of some magnitude, and j)lacing under it a canis- 
ter containing a record of the event, and over it the 
British flag, he formally took possession of the North 
Magnetic Pole and its adjoining territory of Boothia, 
in the name of Great Britain and King William IV. 

This was doubtless an approximation to the position 
of the Pole, as it then was, as scientific men had pre- 
viously fixed it in this neighborhood, from observations 
of their compasses in various circumjacent latitudes ; 
but the trouble with this pole is that it .does not stay 



DISCOVERY OF THE M.iGNETIC POLE. 273 

fixed, but moves IT 4" each year, and revolves around 
the North Pole of the earth once in 1890 years. Accord- 
ing to this calculation it will come around to Koss's 
cairn in Boothia again in A. D. 3721. 
! After a second imprisonment of eleven months, the 
Victory was warped into open sea, August 27th, 1831, 
but after advancing four miles in one month, she was 
again ice-bound, September 27th, and another deso- 
late winter was spent in Regent's Inlet — how desolate 
none can tell who has not suffered similar solitude and 
monotony. 

As the experience of two summers left them little 
hope of saving the ship, Captain Ross and his officers 
resolved to abandon the Victory, and travel over the 
ice to Fury Beach, and thus avail themselves of the 
boats, which might enable them to reach Davis's 
Straits. Accordingly, on the 29th of May, 1832, the 
colors of the Victory were ho'sted and nailed to the 
mast, and the captain and crew took a sad leave of her. 
'' It was the first vessel," says Ross, " that I had ever 
been obliged to abandon, after having served in thirty- 
six, during a period of forty-two years. It w\as like 
the last parting with an old friend, and I did not pass 
the point where she ceased to be visible without stop- 
ping to take a sketch of this melancholy desert, ren- 
dered more melancholy by the solitary, abandoned help- 
less home of our past years, fixed in immovable ice till 
time should perform on her his usual work." 

After incredible fatigue and hardship, the crew 
reached Fury Beach in the latter part of July, where, 
thanks to Parry and Providence, they found boats and 
provisions in good condition. August 1st, they em- 
barked in their boats on an open sea, and after much 
bufieting, many perils, and a month of toil, they 



274 SECOND EXPEDITION OF JOHN ROSS. 

reached the mouth of the inlet. Here they were 
doomed again to a sad disa23pointment, for after several 
fruitless attempts to run along Barrow's Straits, the ice 
obliged them to haul their boats on shore and pitch 
their tents. Day after day they lingered till the third 
week in September; but the strait continuing one im- 
penetrable mass of ice, it was unanimously agreed that 
their only resource was to fall back on the stores at 
Fury Beach, and there spend a fourth long winter 
in the Arctic Circle. They were only able to proceed 
half the distance in boats, and on the 24th of Sep- 
tember left them behind on the shores of Batty Bay. 

The rest of the journey was performed on foot, the 
provisions beinii^ drawn in sledges. On the 7th of 
October they reached the canvas hut, dignified with 
the name of Somerset House, whicii they had erected 
in July, on the scene of the Fury's Avreck, to which 
they thought they had bid a last farewell. 

Building a snoAV wall four feet thick around their 
canvas house, strengthening the roof with spars so that 
it might be covered with snow, and putting up another 
stove, they continued to make themselves comfortable, 
until the scurvy broke out among them and several 
of the men fell victims thereto. It was indeed an anx- 
ious and doleful winter, for, should they be disap- 
pointed in their hopes of escaping the next summer, 
their failing strength and diminishing stores left them 
little hope of surviving another year. As the sum- 
mer opened, they moved forward stores to Batty Bay, 
a distance of thirty-two miles ; but as their numbers 
were now reduced, this land carriage taxed their 
stren-i^th sorely, and it occupied a month. Another 
month was passed at Batty Bay, in constant expecta- 
tion of the movinir of the ice. 



RESCUED BY THE ISABELLA. 275 

At length on the evening of August 14th, the sight 
of moving ice gladdened their hearts ; on the morning 
of the 15th, they slowly made their way through the 
masses of ice with which the bay was encumbered, 
and to their great joy they found, on the 17th, the wide 
expanse of Barrow's Strait, open to navigation. Pushing 
on with renewed hope. Cape York soon lay behind 
them, and by alternately rowing and sailing, they 
rested on the night of the 25th in a good harbor on 
the eastern shore of Navy Board Inlet. 

At four o'clock the following morning, they were 
roused from their slumber by the joyful announcement 
of a ship in sight, and never did men more hurriedly 
and energetically start in pursuit ; but the elements 
were against them, and the ship disappeared in the 
distant haze. Another vessel, however, was seen a 
few hours afterward, lying in a calm, and by hard row- 
ing they soon came up with her ; strange to say, she 
proved to be the Isabella, the same vessel in which 
Captain Boss had made his first trip to the Arctic seas, 
now employed as a whaler. 

The officers of the Isabella could scarcely credit the 
story of Captain Boss, as he had long been supposed 
to be dead ; when all doubts were removed, the rig- 
ging was instantly manned to do the adventurers 
honor, and thundering cheers welcomed Boss and his 
gallant band on board. The scene that followed can 
not better be described than in Captain Boss's own 
words : — 

" Though we had not been supported by our names 
and characters, we should not the less have claimed 
from charity the attentions that we received, for never 
was seen a more miserable set of wretches. Unshaven 
since I know not when, dirty, dressed in rags of wild 



276 SECOND EXPEDITION OF JOHN ROSS. 

beasts, and starved to the very bones, our gaunt and 
grim looks, when contrasted with those of the well- 
dressed and well-fed men around us, made us all feel 
(I believe for the first time) what we really were, as 
well as what we seemed to others. But the ludicrous 
soon took the place of all other feelings ; in such a 
crowd and such confusion, all serious thought was im- 
possible, while the new buoyancy of our spirits made 
us abundantly willing to be amused by the scene 
which now opened. 

" Every man was hungry, and was to be fed ; all were 
ragged, and were to be clothed ; there was not one to 
whom washing was not indispensable, nor one whom 
his beard did not deprive of all human semblance. 
In the midst of all, there were interminable questions 
to be asked and answered on both sides ; the adven- 
tures of the Victory, our own escapes, the politics of 
England, and the news which was four years old. But 
all subsided into peace at last. The sick were accom- 
modated, the seamen disposed of, and all was done for 
us which care and kindness could perform. 

" Night at length brought quiet and serious thoughts, 
and I trust there was not a man among us who did 
not then express, where it was due, his gratitude for 
that interposition which had raised us all from des- 
pair which none could now forget, and had brought 
us from the borders of a most distant grave, to life, 
and friends, and civilization. Long accustomed, how- 
ever, to a cold bed on the hard snow or the bare rocks, 
few could sleep amidst the comforts of our new ac- 
commodations. I was myself compelled to leave the 
bed which had been kindly assigned me, and take my 
abode in a chair for the night ; nor did it fare much 
better with the rest. It was for time to reconcile us 



RETURN OF THE LOST EXPLORERS. 



277 



to the sudden and violent change^, to break through 
what had become habit, and to inure us once more 
to the usages of former days." 

The party reached England, October 15th, 1833, 
after an absence of four-and-a-half years. Having 
long been considered as lost, they were looked upon 
as men risen from the dead, and met and escorted 
by a crowd of sympathizers. Orders, medals, and hon- 
ors were showered upon John Ross by his own country- 
men and continental sovereigns, and Parliament 
granted him £5,000 as some remuneration for his out- 
lays and hardships. A baronetcy was conferred on 
Felix Booth, the patron of the expedition. 

John Ross and James C. Ross subsequently ap- 
peared again in the Arctic Seas as searchers for Frank- 
lin. 




CHAPTER XX. 
GEORGE BACK'S EXPEDITIONS. 

Captain George Back will be remembered as a 
companion of Franklin on his first land expedition. 
He was in Italy at the time when the prolonged 
absence of the Rosses began to awaken fears for their 
safety. Hastening home, he volunteered to lead a 
land expedition in search of the lost explorers, and, 
accompanied by Dr. King, left England for New York 
in February 1833, for that purpose. 

Back and King left Montreal April 25th, in two 
canoes amid enthusiastic cheering, and as the boats 
turned their bows up the noble St. Lawrence, one 
loud huzza bade the travelers farewell. The route 
lay up the Ottawa. Paul, an old Iroquois guide 
who knew every rock in the whole line of rapids 
between Montreal and Hudson's Bay, was the pilot. 

On the 17th of June, the travelers arrived at Nor- 
way House, where they halted to enlist volunteers 
to guide and accompany them. The experts in 
wilderness life were reluctant at first to engage in the 
enterprise, but James McKay, a powerful High- 
lander and one of the best steersmen in the country, 
having consented to enlist, there was no further 
trouble in securing men. Among other applicants 
two Canadians, old acquaintances of Back's, came 
nearly breathless with haste, and were enlisted. 

278 



woman's eights at nokway house. 279 

But, "there is many a slip between the cup and tlie 
lip." These Canadians had wives, and these wives 
thought they had rights, as surely they had. The 
different conduct of these w^omen illustrates the two 
great methods by which the gentle sex enforce 
their rights. One, a good strapping dame, cuffed her 
husband's ears with such dexterity and good will, 
that he w^as fain to cvj peccavi and seek shelter in a 
friendly tent ; the other, an interesting girl of seven- 
teen, burst into tears, and with piteous sobs clung to 
the husband of her love, as if she w^ould hold him 
prisoner in her arms. The result proved that each 
method was equally effectual, for Back lost the ser- 
vices of the men. 

Leaving Norway House on the 28th of June, and 
proceeding by the usual route, Back approached 
Cumberland House on the 5th of July. The crew 
dressed themselves out in all their finery — silver bands 
tassels, plumes and feathers, intending to approach the 
station with some military effect ; but unfortunately 
for the poor fellows, the rain fell in torrents, their 
feathers drooped, and to complete their discomfiture 
they were obliged to walk in their crestfallen condi- 
tion for a mile in the mud before reaching the station. 

The boats, stores, etc., were all in readiness for a 
start, and Capt. Back had the satisfaction of getting 
his two batteaux under way on the 6th of July. 
Each was laden wdth a cargo weighing over two 
tons, exclusive of men, bedding, and clothes. Yet 
with such steersmen as McKay and Sinclair, no 
apprehension was felt for their safety. 

Back lingered behind a day or two, and then 
advanced in his canoe with eight attendants under 
the pilotage of his skillful guide, De Charloit, a half- 

17 



280 THE BATTEAUX AND CANOES. 

breed, and soon overtook Dr. King with the large boats. 
The contrast between the rapidity of motion of the 
two parties was striking. The water was very low, 
and the cumbrous batteaux were dragged in some 
places laboriously a few paces at a time by the united 
exertions of those on board and those on shore. 
Sometimes unable to resist the force of the imjDetuous 
current they Avere swept back ; at others, suspended 
on the arched back of a wave, they struggled and 
labored until they were again in the shelter of some 
friendly eddy. But the canoe, frail as she was, was 
threaded through the boiling rapids and sunken rocks 
with fearful elegance. 

On the 21st of July, the party reached Portage la 
Loche, the high ridge of land which divides the 
waters running into Hudson's Bay from those which 
direct their course to the Arctic Sea. Here a beauti- 
ful and picturesque view opened to their sight. A 
thousand feet below, the sylvan landscape lay spread 
out in all the mid luxuriance of its summer clothing. 
Even the most jaded of the party seemed to forget 
his weariness, and halted involuntarily to gaze with 
admiration on a spectacle so magnificent. 

On the 8th of August they reached Great Slave 
Lake and were welcomed at Fort Kesolution. The 
remainder of the month was spent by Back in explor- 
ing this lake and searching for Great Fish River, 
called by the Indians Thlew-ee-choh, and now named 
in honor of our explorer, who was the first to descend 
it. Back's River. 

Many encampments of Indians were passed, whose 
occupants were employed in drying the flesh of 
moose recently killed. The hunters were lying at 
full length on the grass, whiffing the cherished pipe, 




INDIAN aUMMJiK ENCAMPMENT. 




MOOSE HUNTING — VUKON BITER. 



INDIAIN" SUMMER ENCAMPMENTS. 281 

or lounging on fheir elbows to watch tlie frizzling of 
a ricli marrow bone, the customary perquisite of their 
labors. Women were lighting or tending the fires, over 
which were suspended rows of thinly sliced meat, some 
screaming to thievish dogs, and others with still 
louder screams, endeavoring to drown the shrill cries 
of their children, who, swaddled and unable to stir, 
were half suffocated with the smoke ; while to com- 
plete the scene, eight or ten boys at play, were turn- 
ing themselves over and under some white bark 
canoes like so many land dolphins. Their happiness 
was at the full ; at that moment they were without 
care, enjoying themselves according to their nature 
and capacity. Is human happiness ever much more 
than this ? 

On the 29th of August, Back reached one of the 
tributaries of the Great Fish River, and yielding to 
that pleasing emotion which discoverers, in the first 
bound of their transport, may be pardoned for indul- 
ging, he threw himself down on the bank and drank a 
hearty draught of the limpid water. He then 
returned to winter- quarters at Fort Reliance on Slave 
Lake where a house was erected. 

As winter came on the sufferings of the Indians in 
the vicinity were extreme. " Famine," says Back, 
" with her gaunt and bony arm pursued them at every 
turn, and strewed them lifeless on the cold bosom of 
the snow. Often did I share my own plate with the 
children, whose helpless state and piteous cries were 
peculiarly distressing. Compassion for the full-grown 
may or may not be felt, but that heart must be cased 
in steel which is insensible to the cry of a child for 
food." 

Back's party shared in the general distress and 



U ^ »TOT^T^ r^TT^ T^Tr^TTTT " 



282 ^ " KAISING THE DEVIL, 

could bestow but little on the wretched sufferers, 
who began to imagine that the instruments in the 
observatory kept the deer at. a distance and caused 
their sufferings. Even the voyageurs were superstitous- 
ly impressed, and on one occasion two of them listened 
by the fence built around the observatory, and hear- 
ing at intervals the words " now " and " stop," always 
succeeded by silence, they turned hastily away and 
reported to their companions that they verily believed 
the captain was " raising the devil." 

In November, the chief Akaitcho, the old acquaint- 
ance of Franklin, arrived very opportunely with some 
meat which was of great benefit to all. When hQ 
went away he took some of the starving Indians with 
him, and promised Back that he should not want as 
long as he had anything to send to the fort. And he 
kept his word, and during a most apalling period of 
suffering and calamity proved himself the firm friend 
of the expedition; the dawn of each morning saw 
him prepared for the hunt, and he boldly encountered 
every difficulty and made others act by the force of 
his example. 

In describing the scenes of this winter Back says : — 
— "No sooner had one party closed the door than 
another feebly opened it, and confirmed by their half- 
famished looks and sunken eyes their heart-rending 
tale of sufferings. They spoke little, but crowded in 
silence around the fire, as if eager to enjoy the only 
comfort remaining to them. A handful of mouldy 
pounded meat which had been intended for the dogs 
was all we could give them ; and this, with the cus- 
tomary presentation of the friendly pipe, was suffi- 
cient to efface for a moment the recollection of their 
sorrows, and even light up their faces with a smile 
of hope." 



SAD FATE OF AUGUSTUS. 283 

In Marchj information came that Augustus, the 
Esquimaux interpreter and Back's old friend, hear- 
ing that he was in the country had set out to join 
him, and walked from Hudson's Bay to Fort Resolu- 
tion for that purpose. From this place he started 
with a Canadian and Iroquois, who were taking 
dispatches to Back ; but they all lost their way, and 
the couriers returned to the fort without Augustus, 
who had persisted in going on alone. In June the 
remains of the brave Esquimaux were found near the 
Riviere a Jean. ^' Such," says Back, " was the misera- 
ble end of poor Augustus ! — a faithful, disinterested, 
kind-hearted creature, who had won the regard not 
of myself only, but I may add of Sir John Frank- 
lin and Dr. Richardson also, by qualities, which, 
wherever found, in the lowest as in the highest forms 
of social life, are the ornament and charm of human- 
ity." 

On the 25th of April 1834, a messenger arrived 
with the glad tidings of the safe return of Ross and 
his party to England. Back, however, thought it his 
duty to explore Fish River, and on the 7th of June 
left Fort Reliance for this purpose. Though no 
longer stimulated with the desire to render aid and 
comfort to Ross, he was heartily glad to get away 
from scenes of suffering and death, and launch out 
again into stirring adventure. 

In descending the Fish River, eighty or ninety 
miles of the distance was a succession of falls and 
rapids, keeping the men in a constant state of exertion 
and anxiety. Cataracts, too, obstructed their passage. 
In passing down one of these, where the river was 
full of rocks and boulders, the boat was obliged to 
be lightened. 



284 EUNNINO THE EAPIDS. 

" I stood," says Back, " on a higli rock, with an 
anxious heart, to see her run it. Away they went 
with the speed of an arrow, and in a moment the 
foam and rocks hid them from my view. I heard 
what sounded in my ear like a wild shriek ; I followed 
with an agitation which may be conceived, and, to 
my inexpressible joy, found that the shriek was the 
triumphant whoop of the crew, who had landed 
safely in a small bay below." 

I>3 ear the close of July, Back approached the mouth 
of the Fish Biver and discovered a majestic headland 
which he named Victoria. He thus sums up a gen- 
eral view of the tempestuous stream which he had 
successfully descended : — 

"This, then, may be considered as the mouth of 
the Thlew-ee-choh, which, after a violent and tortuous 
course of five hundred and thirty geographical miles, 
running through an iron-ribbed country, without a sin- 
gle tree on the whole line of its banks, expanding into 
fine large lakes witli clear horizons, most embarrass- 
ing to the navigator, and broken into falls, cascades, 
and rapids to the number of no less than eighty- 
three in the whole, pours its waters into the Polar 
Sea in latitude 67^ 11 ^ K, and longitude 94^ 30^ W." 

Drift-ice was here encountered, and further prog- 
ress was slow, but on the 7tli of August the party 
reached Point Ogle, the northern extremity of the 
land on the western side at the mouth of the estuary. 
From this point portions of the coast of Boothia were 
seen to the northward. Further explorations by 
water were im[)ossible, but a party proceeded westerly 
along the coast of the Arctic Ocean for about fifteen 
miles, in the direction of Cape Turn-again. 

The country was low, level and desolate and pro- 



A DESOLATE EEGIOJS-. 285 

duced notlimg Lut moss and fern, whicL. was so wet 
tliat it would not "burn. The weather was chilly, 
damp and foggy, and the situation of the explorers 
grew cheerless and miserable. Surrounded on every 
side hj complete desolation, without fire or any kind 
of w^arm food, with heavy rains followed hj thick 
snows, " it cannot " says Back, " be a matter of aston- 
ishment, and much less of blame, that even the best 
men, benumbed in their limbs, and dispirited by the 
dreary and unpromising prospect before them, broke 
out for a moment into low murmurings that theirs' 
was a hard and painful duty." 

Back had now no choice but to start on the return 
journey, which was commenced the middle of August. 
Before setting out, the British flag was unfurled, and 
saluted with three cheers " in honor of his most gra- 
cious majesty," and the name of William the Fourth's 
Land was given to this part of America. 

The many difficulties which had been experienced 
in going down the river were at least doubled in 
returning, but the explorers reached Fort Reliance in 
safety on the 27th of September. Preparations were 
immediately made for spending another winter in 
this dreary place. Hunting and fishing were the 
order of the day, and wood was collected to keep off 
the cold, which proved to be less severe than usual. 

About the last of May they gladly bade adieu to 
the inhospitable region, and reached Norway House 
on the 24th of June. Back returned home by way 
of Montreal and New York, and received many kind 
attentions during his journey through the United 
States. He reached England in September, after an 
absence of over two and a half years, and was there 
honored by an audience with the king. 



a ri.-r^^,^rxx> " 



286 VOYAGE IN THE "TERROR 

Soon afterwards, the Englisli admiralty decided to 
send out an expedition to complete the survey of 
the coast between Regent's Inlet and Point Turn- 
again, and for this purpose Captain Back sailed from 
England in the "Terror," with a crew of seventy- 
three men. Near the Savage Islands they encountered 
a fleet of kayaks and oomiaks, and were hailed by 
their occupants with vociferous cries of teyma. Back 
says that the conduct of the women was particularly 
outrageous ; besides disposing of their garments they 
offered to barter their children, and one of them 
noticino; that an oflicer had but little hair on his 
head, offered to sujiply him with her own. 

Early in September, when near the entrance of 
Frozen Strait, the Terror was seized by the ice as 
with the grasp of a giant, and during the whole of 
that month was whirled backward and forward just 
as the wind or tide directed. "It was," says Back, 
" a month of vexation, disappointment, and anxiety, 
to me more distressing and intolerable than the 
worst pressure of the worst evils which had befallen 
me in any other expedition." 

It was soon evident that there could be no escape 
for several months, and that nothing could be done 
but to make the situation as comfortable as possible. 
Snow walls and galleries were built on the floes ; and 
towards spring, for amusement, some of the men cut 
figures of liouses, forts, vessels, and men and women, 
from blocks of snow. Most of the crew could read, 
some could recite long passages of prose and poetry, 
others could sing ; and by bringing out the talents 
of each for the common benefit, the whole were made 
at times comparatively happy. 

Thus drifting about and at times undergoing terrif 



YOYAGE LN" THE ^^TEEROE." 287 

ic nips, tlie Terror remained fast in the ice till the 
lltli of JmIj, when, after several days spent by 
the crew in attempting to cut her free, a loud rum- 
bling noise was heard, and the ship broke her ice- 
bonds and slid gently into her own element ; but so 
much of the base of her ice cradle still clung to her, 
that she remained on her beam ends for three days 
after. 

Nothing now remained but to get home as soon 
as possible with the crazy, broken and leaky Terror, 
and the voyage thither was as perilous as her encoun- 
ters with the ice had been. On reaching the coast 
of Ireland, the ship was run ashore in a sinking con- 
dition, and could hardly have floated a day longer. 
She was afterwards refitted, and with her and the 
Erebus, James C. Hoss made his explorations in the 
Southern Seas. Subsequently, Franklin and his lost 
expedition sailed in the same famous ships. 

The ice-drift experiences of the Terror much resem- 
ble those of the Advance and Rescue while searching 
for Franklin — a full history whereof is given in Dr. 
Kane's narrative of the First American Expedition. 




CHAPTER XXI. 

LAND EXPEDITIONS OF DEASE AND SIMP- 
SON, AND RAE. 

As a considerable extent of the northern coast of 
America still remained unexplored, the Hudson's Bay- 
Company determined, in 1836, to equip an expedi- 
tion of twelve men under the lead of two of its own 
officers — Peter W. Dease and Thomas Simpson. The 
latter was a young and well-educated Scotchman 
who had resided in the territory since 1829 ; he was 
full of zeal for scientific discovery, and the astronomer 
and historian of the expedition. 

Before setting out, Mr. Simpson spent several 
months at the Red River Settlement, situated near 
the 50th parallel at an elevation of eight or nine hun- 
dred feet above the sea, which then stretched for 
upwards of fifty miles along the wooded borders of 
the Red and Assinoboine Rivers which flow through 
a level country of vast extent. There was no specu- 
lative motive to induce him to color his picture of 
this region, and he may the more readily be relied 
on when he states, that the climate is salubrious, the 
soil good, horses, cattle, hogs and poultry numerous ; 
and til at wheat, barley, oats, and potatoes thrive well in 
the vast Red River Valley. This testimony should 

288 



A winter's journey. 289 

remove the suspicions wliicli some have, that more 
recent travelers in this section have been induced to 
give glowing descriptions thereof from mercenary 
considerations. 

Mr. Simpson left this colony on the 1st of Decem- 
ber for his winter Journey of one thousand two hun- 
dred and seventy-seven miles to Fort Chipewyan, the 
starting point of the expedition. A gay cariole and 
three sledges drawn by dogs, with three picked men 
as drivers, made up the retinue. Much of the route 
lay over the frozen channels of the streams, and fre- 
quently the tinklings of the dog-bells roused the 
moose-deer from their lairs. At times the snow was 
so deep that snow-shoes had to be worn by the 
travelers. Fort Chipewyan, w^here Mr. Dease awaited 
his companion, was reached on the iirst of February. 

The travelers took their departure from this place 
on the 1st of June 1837, and on reaching Great 
Slave Lake, ten days afterwards, were disappointed 
at finding it covered with ice which detained them 
till the 21st of June — a delay which they beguiled 
with hunting, and with observing the wonderful 
mirage of this region and the games and sports of the 
Indians. A dance was also given to the men in 
which the Indian women joined. It furnished much 
sport, and was concluded with a generous supper, tea 
being the only beverage. The games of the peoj^le 
without the fort were generally at their height at 
midnight, when the coolness of the atmosphere incited 
to exertion. 

Fort Norman on the Mackenzie Eiver was reached 
on the 1st of July, and on the 9th, the Arctic Ocean 
at the mouth of the river was seen, and saluted with 
joyous cheers. As the season was favorable, the 



290 ON THE COASTS OF ALASKA. 

explorers proceeded westerly along the coast, and on 
the 23d of July arrived at Return Reef, where Frank- 
lin had been stopped. Beyond this was unexplored 
territory. Pushing on, they discovered the mouth of 
a river and named it the Colville. They supposed i'c 
to be a large one, for it freshened the waters of 
the ocean to a distance of three leasrues. Their 
conclusions were right, for the Colville Eiver, now in 
the United States territory of Alaska, has since been 
ascertained to be a thousand miles long. 

They also discovered another noble river, the Garry, 
whose mouth was a mile in width. Though the 
ground was frozen four inches deej), a few flowers 
cheered the eye of the travelers. On the 1st of 
August the party had arrived within two degrees of 
Point Barrow, the most eastern point reached by the 
barge of the Blossom. As further progress was 
here prevented by the ice, Simpson with five com- 
panions pushed on afoot, and on the 4th had the 
great satisfaction of seeing the long, low spit of land 
called Point Barrow stretching to the northward. 
On reaching it, they unfurled the British flag with 
three cheers and took possession of this gravelly cape 
in the name of their king. The last portion of the 
journey to Point Barrow had been made in an 
oomiak which was borrowed of a party of Esquimaux 
met on the way. The landing at Point Barrow was 
made at a place half way between a winter village 
and summer camp of the natives, and in the vicinity 
was an immense cemetery, where the remnants of 
humanity lay on the ground in the usual seal-skin 
clotliing. The natives were generally friendly, but 
thievish. 

Having reached the limit of their explorations in 



DOWN ESCAPE EAPIB. 291 

» 

this direction, tLe whole party returned to winter- 
quarters at Great Bear Lake. In the summer of 1838 
they again commenced their travels, and on the 25th 
of June were nearing the mouth of the Coppermine. 
Franklin had descended the lower jDart of this river 
when it had fallen to its summer level, but Dease and 
Simpson were swept down it by the spring flood, in 
which floated cakes of ice, while the banks were piled 
up with pondrous fragments. Mr. Simpson thus 
describes some of the perils of the passage : — 

" The day was bright and lovely as we shot down 
rapid after rapid, in many of which we had to pull 
for our lives, to keep out of the suction of the jDreci- 
pices, along whose base the breakers raged and foamed 
with overwhelming fury. Shortly before noon we 
came in sight of Escape Rapid of Franklin, and a 
glance at the overhanging cliffs told us that there 
was no alternative but to run down with a full cargo. 
In an instant we were in the vortex, and, before we 
were aware, my boat was borne towards an isolated 
rock, which the boiling surge almost concealed. To 
clear it on the outside was no longer possible. Our 
only chance of safety was to run between it and the 
lofty eastern cliff. The word was passed, and every 
breath was hushed. A stream, which dashed down 
upon us over the brow of the precipice, more than a 
hundred feet in height, mingled with the spray that 
whirled upward from the rapid, forming a terrific 
shower-bath. The pass was about eight feet wide, 
and the error of a single foot on either side would 
have been instant destruction. As, guided by Sin- 
clair's consummate skill, the boat shot safely through 
those jaws of death, an involuntary cheer arose." 

On the 1st of July the party reached the sea, and 



292 WINTER-QUARTEES OIT GREAT BEAR LAKE. 

on tlie I7tli they started to coast along its sliores to 
the eastward. On arriving, about the 10th of August, 
in the vicinity of Point Turn-again the boats were 
arrested by ice. On the 20th, Simpson with seven 
men started on a walk along the coast. On the 23d 
they came to an elevated rocky ridge which was 
named Cape Alexander. On ascending it, a vast and 
splendid prospect burst suddenly upon the travelers. 
The sea, as if transformed by enchantment, rolled its 
free waves at their feet, and extended to the eastward 
as far as could be seen. Islands of various shapes and 
sizes overspread its surface ; and the northern land 
terminated to the e3^e in a bold and lofty cape thirty 
or forty miles distant. On the extensive land to the 
northward, Simpson bestowed the name of Victoria, 
and he called its eastern extremity Cape Pelly. 

After surveying nearly one hundred and forty miles 
of new coast easterly of Point Turn-again, the foot 
party returned to the boats. Early in September the 
return journey up the Coppermine w^as commenced, 
and on the 14th of that month Fort Confidence, the 
old winter-quarters on Great Bear Lake, was safely 
reached. 

Here the winter of 1838-9 was passed by the 
explorers, and in June 1839, undaunted by the dan- 
gers and privations of the previous season, they again 
started on their third successive visit to the Arctic 
Sea. 

On the 3d of July their boats emerged from the 
Coppermine, and sailing eastward the party encamped 
on the 2Gth at Cape Alexander. Continuing their 
voyage, they discovered, on the 10th of August, a 
strait three miles wide through which they passed. 
Three days afterward, they were delighted at reaching 
Cape Ogle at the mouth of the Great Fish River. 



EETUKN TO BED EIVEE SETTLEMENT. 293 

All the objects for whicli tlie expedition was fitted 
out liad now been accomplished. The northern limits 
of America to the westward of the Great Fish or 
Back's River had been surveyed, but it still remained 
a question whether Boothia might not he united to 
the continent on the other side of the estuary. So 
the party pushed on to a point distant about two 
degrees from Point Ogle, where they came to the 
mouth of a river, which they named the Castor and 
Pollux after their two boats. This river was the 
limit of their eastern explorations. 

In returning to the Coppermine River they crossed 
over to the northern side of the strait, and traced the 
southern coast of King William's Island for about 
sixty miles till it turned to the north at Cape Herschel, 
distant ninety miles from the magnetic pole. Along 
these same dreary coasts the party of Sir John Frank- 
lin attempted to make good their retreat about ten 
years later ; and one of his boats, with skeletons, guns, 
etc., was subsequently found some distance above 
Cape Herschel. 

The explorers also surveyed the coasts of Victoria 
Land for a long distance, and reached the Coppermine 
on the 16th of September, having made a voyage of 
over sixteen hundred miles on the Polar Sea — ^the 
longest one ever made thereon in open boats. 

Mr. Simpson left Fort Confidence on the 26th of 
September, 1839, and after a journey of 1910 miles 
made on foot within sixty -one days, he arrived at Red 
River Settlement early in February, 1840. Here he 
remained waiting for authority from England to pro- 
ceed on a new expedition which he had proposed to 
lead. Deeply mortified at not receiving answers to 
his dispatches as soon as he expected them, he left 



294 ME. simpso:n" murdered. 

the settlement on the 6tli of June with a party of 
half-breeds and settlers, intending to cross the prairies 
to St. Peter's on the Mississippi River, and thence 
proceed to England. 

Mr. Simpson subsequently went on ahead with 
four men, and beyond this all that is known with 
certainty is, that on the 13th of June Simpson shot 
two of his companions ; that the other two rejoined 
the larger party, and that a portion thereof went to 
his encampment on the next morning and killed him. 
Whether he shot the two men in self-defence or when 
suffering under a temporary hallucination of mind 
was never known by his friends. 

Messrs. Dease and Simpson supposed that they had 
sailed to the eastward of Boothia, and that the isth- 
mus which Ross said connected Boothia with the 
continent, did not exist. To explore the coast line 
which was, in consequence of their discoveries, believ- 
ed to extend from the Castor and Pollux easterly to 
the Fury and Hecla Strait — whose waters connect 
with Hudson's Ba}if— the Hudson's Bay Company 
sent out an expedition in 1846 under Dr. John Rae. 

Dr. Rae, w^ith twelve men and two boats, left Fort 
York on the 12 th of June, and coasted northerly along 
the westerly shores of Hudson's Bay. On the 24th 
of July they anchored at the head of Repulse Bay. 
They then proceeded northerly, taking one boat with 
them, over an isthmus interspersed with lakes, forty- 
three miles to Committee Bay, the southerly extrem- 
ity of Prince Regent's Inlet. Finding that the sea- 
son was too far advanced to complete the survey 
that year, Rae determined, with a boldness and con- 
fidence in his own resources that has never been sur- 
passed, to winter in Repulse Bay, and to finish his 



DR. EAE^S EXPLOKATIOT^S. 295 

explorations on tlie ice the next spring. He therefore 
recrossed the isthmus with his boat, and set about 
collecting provisions and fuel for a ten months' winter. 

To one less experienced and hardy, the desolate 
shores of Repulse Bay would have forbidden such an 
attempt. They yielded neither drift-wood nor shrub- 
by plants of any kind ; but Dr. Rae employed ]3art 
of his men to gather the Avithered stems of a small 
herbaceous plant which grew in abundance on the 
rocks, and to pile it in cocks like hay : others he set 
to build a house of stone and earth called Fort Hope ; 
while he and his Esquimaux interpreter were occu- 
pied in killing deer for winter food. 

Early in April, 1847, Rae and part of his men 
started with sledges drawn by dogs, and after again 
reaching Committee Bay, traveled northerly along its 
western shore, and on the 18th reached the Lord 
Mayor's Bay of Sir John Ross, on whose shores the 
crew of the lost Victory so long resided. This jour- 
ney proved that Ross was right in supposing that 
Boothia was connected with the continent. No 
attempt was made to proceed westerly to the Castor 
and Pollux, and the party immediately set out on 
their return to Fort Hope. 

On the 12th of May Rae started to examine the 
eastern coast of Committee Bay, and on the 27th had 
reached his farthest point at a headland, which he 
called Cape Crozier, situated about twenty miles 
south of the west end of the Fury and Hecla Strait. 
He then returned to Repulse Bay, and the whole 
party arrived safely at Fort Churchill on the last day 
of August. The entire expedition had been an emi- 
nently successful one, and proved that Dr. Rae was 

well calculated for an Arctic explorer. 

18 



CHAPTER XXII. 

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN'S LAST VOYAGE, WITH 
A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 

One of the most enthusiastic and indefatigable ex- 
plorers of the Arctic regions of this, or any other age, 
was Sir John Franklin. His history as an eminent 
navigator, — his persistent, cheerful zeal for the accom- 
plishment of a favorite object through obstacles, dan- 
gers, and oftentimes intense suffering, won for him the 
admiration and respect of the civilized world ; and 
especially has the uncertainty of his fate excited an 
almost universal interest. 

John Franklin was born at Spilsby, Lincolnshire, 
England, April 16th, 1786. He was the youngest son 
of a respectable farmer in moderate circumstances, 
with a family of twelve children to provide for and 
educate. John was intended by his parents for the 
Church, and at an early age was placed in a grammar 
school to prepare ultimately for the ministry. But 
his tastes led him in a different direction. He had a 
passion for the sea. While a school-boy at Louth, he 
took advantage of a holiday to walk twelve miles, 
with a companion, to look at the ocean, which he then 
beheld for the first time. The effect upon his mind 
was wonderful. He gazed upon it for hours with 
emotions of intense dehght, and from that day his 

296 



LIFE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 29? 

heart burned as it never did before, to trace its bound- 
aries and explore its mysteries. 

His father, thinking his son carried away by a boy- 
ish romance, and that he had no idea of the unpoet- 
ical shade of a sailor's life, hoped that a little expe- 
rience of its hardships and discomforts would break 
the charm, and cure him of his folly. Accordingly he 
gave John permission to make a voyage in a merchant 
vessel to Lisbon. But the experiment proved an un- 
fortunate one, so far as the father's wishes were con- 
cerned, for it only served to intensify the boy's passion 
for a sea-faring life. Mr. Franklin, becoming convinced 
that it was useless to attempt any longer to change 
the propensity of his son, yielded to his wishes, and 
procured for him a position in the navy as a midship- 
man, at the age of fourteen. He was placed on board 
the Polyphemus, a ship of the line, and served in her 
at the battle of Copenhagen, April 2d, 1801. During 
the engagement, a young midshipman and comrade 
was shot dead standing by his side. 

In the ensuing summer he was more pleasantly em- 
ployed on board the Investigator, a government 
ship commanded by his cousin. Captain Flinders, who 
was commissioned to explore the coasts of Australia. 
After nearly two years spent in this service, which 
was an excellent preparatory school to qualify him 
for future pursuits, he with the officers and crew sailed 
for home in the Porpoise, a store-ship — the Investi- 
gator having been condemned as unseaworthy. 
But the Porpoise, shortly after leaving port, was 
wrecked upon a reef about two hundred miles from 
Australia. Here he and his companions remained fifty 
days, upon a small sand-bank, until relief came to 
them from Port Jackson. The crew was now dis- 



298 LIFE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 

persed, and Franklin was taken to Canton, where he 
obtained a passage to England on board an armed In- 
diaman. On their way home they were attacked by 
a French man-of-war, which, after a severe conflict, 
was compelled to retire in a crippled condition. Dur- 
ing the battle, yonng Franklin distinguished himself 
for bravery and efficiency. 

On reaching England he was ordered to join the ship- 
of-the-line, Bellerophon, and in 1805 took part in the 
memorable battle of TraMgar, in which he discharged 
the responsible duties of signal midshipman, with re- 
markable coolness and courage, in the midst of a hot 
and most destructive fire from the enemy's sharp-shoot- 
ers. Of forty persons who stood around him on the 
poop of the ship, many fell, and only seven escaped 
unhurt. 

Subsequent to this, he served six years on board the 
Bedford, on various stations, the last of which was on 
the coast of the United States, during the war of 1812 
-15. He commanded the boats of the Bedford in a 
battle with the American gun-boats at New Orleans, 
one of which he boarded and captured, though at the 
expense of a severe wound. For his gallantry in this 
action, he was promoted to a lieutenancy. 

In 1818 Franklin made his first Arctic voyage as 
commander of tlie Trent, and with Captain Buchan 
attempted to sail over the North Pole. In 1819 he 
started on his first great overland journey to the 
shores of the Arctic Ocean, which occupied about 
three years. 

In 1823 he was married to Eleanor Porden, daugh- 
ter of an eminent architect, a lady of superior abil- 
ities, who distinguished herself at a very early age 
by her remarkable attainments in Greek and Latin, 



LIFE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 299 

and also in several modern lan^^uages. She was also 
a proficient in botany, chemistry, and geology. She 
was, in addition, a poetess of no ordinary promise. 
In 1818, she published the ^^ Arctic Expedition" — a 
poem. This led to her acquaintance with Franklin, 
to whom she was united in marriage in 1 823. 

About a year and a half after his marriaofe, Frank- 
lin was appointed to the command of another over- 
land expedition to the Arctic Ocean. The appoint- 
ment, though in accordance with his chivalric enthusi- 
astic nature, was, in one respect, very inopportune. 
His devoted wife was in a rapid decline, and evidently 
drawing near her end. When the day assigned for 
his" departure arrived, she was lying at the point of 
death. To leave her, in such circumstances, was like 
tearing out his heart-strings ; but she insisted that he 
should not delay his departure an hour on her account, 
and as he took his leave of her, she, with a kiss, gave 
him as a parting gift, a silk flag, with a request that 
he would hoist it on reaching the Polar Sea, which he 
did. She died, much lamented, the day after her 
husband left England. 

On his return from his two overland journeys, 
Franklin published narratives thereof; no one can 
read them without deep respect and admiration for 
the brave Christian spirit which sustained him and his 
companions during the most appalling hardships. 
The most interesting portions of these narratives have 
been given in preceding chapters. 

In 1828, Franklin was married to Miss Jane Griffin, 
daughter of John Griffin Esq., and born about 1800. 
She still survives, and has distinguished herself the 
world over, by her public spirit, and her indomitable 
perseverance in search of her lost husband. In the 



300 LIFE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 

same year he published a narrative of his second ex- 
pedition, which did him much credit. In the follow- 
ing year he was knighted, and received an honorary 
degree from the University of Oxford, and a gold 
medal from a learned society in Paris. 

In 1830, Sir John, as he was from that time called, 
was put in command of the Rainbow, and ordered to 
cruise in the Mediterranean. While absent, he had 
opportun'ty of rendering important service to the 
Greeks, who were then struggling to throw off the 
Turkish yoke, under which they had long been sorely 
oppressed. In recognition of his kindness. King Otho 
decorated him with the cross of the " Redeemer of 
Greece." Probably no commander of a ship ever paid 
more attent'on to the comfort of those placed under' 
him than Franklin, and the sailors expressed their 
sense of his kindness by calling his vessel the " Celes- 
tial Rainbow," and " Franklin's Paradise." 

In 1833, he was appointed governor of Van Die- 
men's Land, which position he held till 1843. His ad- 
ministration in this colony was remarkably popular 
and useful. He originated, and executed many impor- 
tant measures for the benefit ot the colonists, for 
which they made both public and private demonstra- 
tions of their gratitude, lie founded a college and 
endowed it largely from his own funds, to be con- 
ducted on the most liberal principles, without distinc- 
tion of sect. 

When he resigned his ofhce and returned to England, 
universal regret was expressed by the people of the 
colony. On the day of his departure, a more numer- 
ous gathering than had ever been seen on the ishmd, 
attended him to the ship, and he was much gratified 
by receiving complimentary and affectionate addresses 



franklin's last voyage. 301 

from every district in the colony. As evidence of the 
affection these remote colonists cherished for him, 
they, years afterward, spontaneously raised nearly 
$10,000, and forwarded it to Lady Franklin to aid her 
in fitting out an expedition to search for her missing 
husband. 

Notwithstanding the numerous unsuccessful at- 
tempts to discover a North-west passage to the Pacific 
Ocean, it was still the firm belief of scientific men that 
such a passage did exist, and the desire to solve the 
problem of centuries was undiminished ; although 
reasonable men had long been convinced that if such 
a passage was found, the dangers and difficulties of 
navigating the Northern seas were so great as to pre- 
clude the use of it for purposes of commerce. 

England especially was ambitious of the honor of 
proclaiming to the world that the great question was 
settled, and was also actuated by a more laudable desire 
to promote the interests of science. Although she had 
already expended much treasure, and sacrificed many 
valuable lives in the undertaking which had long been 
the dream of her philosophers, she determined to make 
another attempt to accomplish it. 

Accordingly, in 1845, the two ships, the '^ Erebus " 
and " Terror,'' in which Sir John Clarke Ross had just 
returned from his career of discovery in the Southern 
seas, were fitted out. . Both were of moderate size, 
and renowned for their fitness to encounter ice. They 
were now provided with small steam engines and 
screw propellers, and a three years' supply of every 
thino; that could contribute to the health and comfort 
of voyagers in the Arctic regions. The vessels were also 
furnished with ship-stores, tools, nautical instruments, 
fire-armSj and a large supply of amunition ; in shorty 



302 franklin's last voyage. 

with every thing imagination and experience could 
suggest, that would be needful for officers and crew. 

It was hardly a question with the Admiralty, who 
should be appointed to the command of this enter- 
prise, — it was Sir John Franklin, of course. No other 
man in England was better qualified for this impor- 
tant and perilous undertaking. He had talent, sound 
judgment, kindness of heart, large experience, and 
had lost none of his youthful enthusiasm for adventure, 
although nearly sixty years of age. The achievement 
of a " North-west passage " had been the day-dream of 
his life, and he was glad of an opportunity to make 
another attempt for the realization of his long-cher- 
ished hopes. He unhesitatingly accepted the ap- 
pointment. 

The second in command was Captain Francis R M. 
Crozier, a bold and experienced navigator, who had 
been with Parry in all his northern voyages, and was 
second officer in command of the Antarctic expedition 
under Ross. Crozier was appointed captain of the 
Terror, and Franklin sailed in the Erebus. The crews 
of these two vessels, amounting in all, including offi- 
cers, to one hundred and thirty-eight souls, were 
picked men, hardy, experienced, bold, reliable, and 
enthusiastic. 

Franklin was instructed to proceed through Lancas- 
ter Sound, and westward in the latitude of 74^° until 
he reached the longitude of 98° west. From that 
point he was to penetrate to the southwest towards 
Behring's Straits. 

The ships sailed on the 19th of May, 1845, accom- 
panied by a tender with additional supplies. This 
tender was dismissed in Davis's Strait, and letters from 
the officers and crew carried back — the last ever re- 



franklin's last voyage. 303 

ceived from tliem. One of the men wrote as follows : 
■ — ^^ I need hardly tell you how much we are all delighted 
with our captain. He has, I am sure, won not only the 
respect but the love of every person on board, by his 
amiable manner and kindness to all ; and his influence 
is always employed for some good purpose, both 
among the officers and men. He takes an active part 
in everything that goes on." 

A letter which Sir John wrote to his friend Colonel 
Sabine, contained the following : — 

"I hope my dear wife and daughter will not be over- 
anxious if we should not return by the time they have 
fixed upon ; and I must beg of you to give them the 
benefit of your advice and experience when that time 
arrives, for you know well that without success in our 
object, even after the second winter, we should wish 
to try some other channel if the state of our provis- 
ions and the health of the crews justify it." 

The ships started northward again on the 13th of 
July; on the 26th of July they were spoken near lat- 
itude 75° by the whaler Prince of Wales, which was 
boarded by seven officers of the expedition, who in- 
vited the captain to dine with Sir John on the follow- 
ing day. But as a breeze favorable for the whaler 
sprang up in the night, its captain set sail without 
receiving on board any of the letters which the ex- 
plorers doubtless intended to give him before he left 
them. When the Prince of Wales left the two ships, 
they were moored to an ice-berg. 

This was the last ever seen of the " Erebus " and 
a Terror," and the last direct intelligence that has been 
received from Sir John Franklin and his men to this day. 
Years elapsed before any indication of their fate or the 
faintest trace of the lost explorers were discovered. 



CHAPTEE XXIII. 
SEAKCHES FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIK 

(expeditio]S"s of 1848.) 

As the year 1847 drew to a close without bringing 
any intelligence from Franklin, great solicitude for 
his safety was felt in England, and the government 
resolved to send out three distinct expeditions to 
search for him. Each of these was to have its own 
independent route, but all were to converge toward 
the Arctic Archipelago, through whose intricate and 
unexplored channels and sounds Franklin was supposed 
to be striving to force his way. One of these expe- 
ditions was to sail direct to Lancaster Sound, and 
follow in the track of the missing sliips; another was 
to proceed overhmd down the Mackenzie River, and 
examine the coasts of the continent; and the third 
was to go by wa}^ of Bering's Straits. 

The command of the iirst named expedition was 
given to Captain James C. Ross, who sailed from 
England, June 12tli, 1848, with two ships, the Enter- 
prise and Investigator — the latter being commanded 
by Captain E. J. IVud. Each ship was ])rovi(led with 
a steam launch. The passage through Bafhn's Bay 
was difficult and tedious, and Lancaster Sound was 
not reached till nearly the last of August. At its 

304 



JAMES C. EOSS'S EXPEDITION^. 305 

entrance and wliile sailing along its coasts, the shores 
were carefully scrutinized for traces of Franklin. 
Guns were fired when foggy ; rockets and lights were 
frequently burned ; and casks containing information 
for the benefit of the missing men were daily thrown 
overboard. 

On the 1st of September, Koss reached Cape York 
at the east side of the entrance to Prince Regent's 
Inlet. He then crossed the inlet, and coasted the 
northern shores of Barrow's Strait, far enough to see 
that Wellington Channel was firmly frozen. On the 
11th of September he with great difficulty reached 
Port Leopold, which is situated at the junction of 
the four great channels, Lancaster Sound, Barrow's 
Strait, Wellington Channel, and Prince Regent's Li- 
let. The next day the ice-pack closed the mouth of 
the harbor and the expedition was fast for the winter, 
which the crews passed in a comfortable manner. 

Over fifty white foxes were taken alive during the 
season in traps constructed of casks, and after being 
fitted to copper collars upon which were engraved the 
position of the ships and provision depots, they were 
set at libei'ty, in the hope that some of them might be 
caught by Franklin's men. 

On the 15th of May, Ross and Lieut. McClintock 
with twelve men, made a journey to the south, and 
examined the northern and western shores of North 
Somerset, but found no traces of Franklin, and the 
party returned to the ships, June 23d, in an ex- 
hausted condition. In their absence other unsuccess- 
ful searches had been made, and one party visited 
the house on Fury Point in which Sir John Ross 
passed the winters of 1832-3. 

It was now midsummer, but the Enterprise and 



306 SEARCHES FOR FBANKLIN-. 

Investigator were still bloclvaded by tlie ice. Prepa- 
rations for leaving were however made, and, as a 
refuge for lost explorers, a house covered with can- 
vas was erected on the shore of spars and other ma- 
terial. A large supply of provisions was stored 
therein ; and one of the launches was put in good 
order, to be left behind. 

After an imprisonment in the ice of one year less 
fourteen days, the ships were liberated on the 28th 
of August, and steered toward the northern shore of 
Barrow's Strait ; but they were soon surrounded by 
ice, and it seemed j)robable that they would remain 
therein for another winter. Soon afterward, however, 
the whole body of ice began to drive to the eastward, 
and the ships were carried with it through Lancaster 
Sound and down the westerly shores of Baffin's Bay. 
Here a great number of icebergs stretched across 
the path, and presented the crews a fearful prospect of 
the destruction of their vessels. But when least ex- 
pected by them, the great ice-floe was rent into innu- 
merable fragments, as if by some unseen power, and 
the vessels were released from its grasp. But it 
was evident that the hunt of the Enterprise and 
Investigator was over for that season ; so they were 
turned homeward, and reached England in November 
1849. The searchers had found no clue as to where 
the lost explorers were, but liad learned of some 
places where they were not. 

The overland search for Franklin was entrusted to 
Sir John Bichardson assisted by Dr. John Rae. 
These gentlemen left Liverpool March 25th, 1848, 
and reached tlie Hudson's Bay Comj)any territory, 
via New York and Montreal. Proceeding thence to 
Great Slave Lake by the usual route, they crossed it, 



EICHARDSOIN- AND EAE's EXPEDITION-. 30 7 

and entered the Mackenzie Eiver, July 21st. Tlie 
sea was reached early in August, and here Esquimaux 
were met in great numbers — all anxious to trade, or 
steal, as opportunity offered ; but of Franklin or his 
ships they knew nothing. 

After entering the Arctic Ocean, Richardson coasted 
eastward for some eight hundred miles, hoping to 
reach and ascend the Coppermine River; but when 
near its mouth, ice prevented further progress of the 
boats, and they were hauled into a safe position, as 
far as the elements were concerned, and abandoned 
with nearly all their contents. It was subsequently 
ascertained that the goods were apjoroprlated by the 
Esquimaux, who also destroyed the boats to secure 
the iron and copper used in their construction. 

The party now proceeded on foot to the Copper- 
mine River and up its valley, and reached Fort Con- 
fidence on Great Bear Lake, Sept. 15th. Here they 
passed the winter. The next summer, Dr. Rae with 
six men descended the Coppermine for the purpose 
of searching the coasts of WoUaston and Victoria 
Land ; but the strait was so full of ice that he could 
not cross it, and the party returned to Fort Confidence 
at the close of August. Dr. Richardson left the fort 
on the 7th of May, and reached Liverpool in Novem- 
ber after an absence of nineteen months. ISTot the 
slightest information of Franklin had been obtained ; 
but provisions and letters were buried in several 
places, and signal posts indicating the precise spots 
set up to attract the attention of the castaways if 
they chanced to come that way. 

The expedition by way of Bering's Strait was put 
under command of Captain Henry Kellett, of the 
ship Herald, which was then in the Pacific. On 



308 SEARCHES FOR FRANKLm. 

receiving instructions from home to that effect, Kel- 
lett proceeded to Kotzebue Sound, but returned to 
winter at the Sandwich Islands. Another vessel, the 
Plover, commanded by Thomas E. L. Moore, started 
from England January 1st, 1848, to join the Herald, 
and passed the winter of 1848-9 at Noovel, Kam- 
chatka. 

On the 14th of July, 1849, the Plover anchored off 
Chamisso Island, Kotzebue Sound, the appointed 
rendezvous, where she was joined the next day by 
the Herald, and by the yacht Nancy Dawson, in 
which its owner, Robert Sheclden, had started on a 
pleasure trip around the woi-ld. While in China, Mr. 
Shed den heard of the intended expedition, and resolved 
to join it in the search for Franklin. 

On the 18th, the three vessels sailed north, and on 
the 25th had reached Icy Cape. At this point an 
expedition of four boats under Lieut. Pullen, accom- 
panied by the yacht, proceeded up the coast as far as 
Dease's Inlet. The yacht and two ot' the boats then 
returned to the ships, which meantime had cruised to 
the north until ice was encountered. Lieut. Pullen, 
with the other two boats, continued the search easterly 
to the mouth of the Mackenzie, which he ascended, 
reaching Fort Simpson on the 18th of October. Here 
he wintered ; and in the following season he descend- 
ed the river, and remained on the sea coast till the 
first of September. Returning to Fort Simpson he 
proceeded to England, and again joined in the search 
as commander of the North Star. 

In September, the three vessels rendezvoused in 
Kotzebue Sound, and on the 29th of that month, 
leaving the Plover to winter there, the Herald and 
the Nancy L)awson started south. The gallant Shed- 



THE HERALD AND PLOVER. 309 

den, who had taken an active and daring part in the 
summer's search, died at Mazatlan soon afterward. 

In July, 1850, the Herald again joined the Plover 
at the rendezvous, and the two vessels started north 
together, but on encountering ice separated. The 
coast between Icy Cape and Point Barrow was care- 
fully examined by the Plover. The two vessels met 
again in August, and fell in with the Enterprise — 
Captain Collinson — which had just arrived to join in 
the search. When winter came on the Herald sailed 
for England, and the Plover anchored in Grantley 
Harbor. At a subsequent date the Plover also re- 
turned home. 






CHAPTER XXIV. 
SEAECHES FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIK 

(expeditions of 1850.) 

Five years had now elapsed since Franklin left 
England, and not a word had been heard from him 
since the Prince of Wales parted from the Erebus and 
Terror in Baffin's Bay. Hopes were however enter- 
tained that the missing explorers were still alive, and 
the desire to rescue them became intense. The search, 
in which the United States now joined, was accord- 
ingly renewed with increased vigor. Several fresh 
expeditions were dispatched from England to the 
scene of action. One of them consisting of two ships, 
the Enterprise and Investigator, under Collinson and 
McClure, sailed for Bering's Strait, via Cape Horn ; 
and others, whose history is given in this chapter, 
took the old route up Baffin's Bay. 

The most important of these expeditions via Baffin's 
Bay, was entrusted to the command of Captain H. T. 
Austin, and comprised two ships — the Resolute and 
Assistance — and two screw steamers — the Pioneer 
and Intrepid. These vessels were commanded respect- 
ively by Captain Austin, Captain E. Ommaney, Lieut. 
S. Osborne, and Lieut. B. Cator. Captain Austin's 
squadron sailed from England in May, 1850, its par- 

310 



Austin's squadeoit. 811 

ticular mission being to searcli tlie shores of Welling- 
ton Channel, and Melville Island. 

The season proved an unfavorable one for Arctic 
navigation, and the ships, being beset by ice in Mel- 
ville Bay, did not reach Lancaster Sound till August. 
The Assistance and Intrepid undertook the examina- 
tion of the north shores of this sound, and on the 23d 
reached Cape Riley, at the entrance to Wellington 
Channel, where were found the first traces of the 
lost expedition. The Rescue, one of the U. S. explor- 
ing vessels, was also at Cape Riley at the time and 
shared in this discovery. 

Soon afterward several ships of other expeditions 
were in the neighborhood of Cape Riley; and on 
Beechey Island, three miles distant from the cape, 
were found very interesting relics of Franklin's party, 
and the graves of three of his men. All went to show 
that the crews of the Erebus and Terror had here 
made their first winter-quarters. Dr. Kane, of the 
Advance, carefully examined all these traces of Frank- 
lin, and his descriptions thereof will be found in a 
subsequent chapter of this book. 

Leaving Beechey Island and sailing westerly, Aus- 
tin's squadron reached a position between Cornwallis 
Island and Griffith's Island where the vessels were 
frozen in the ice for the winter. In the spring, sledge 
excursions were made along Parry's Strait. Captain 
Ommaney with one hundred and four men and four- 
teen sledges, traveled four hundred and eighty miles 
— two hundred and -^Ye of which had never been 
explored. In this journey, occupying sixty days, 
sails were occasionally hoisted on the sledges, and 
large kites were also attached. When the wind was 

high, these aids propelled the sledge very rapidly, 

19 



812 SEARCHES FOR FRANKLm. 

and the wliole of the party then rode ; "hut when the 
wind fell, the sledges, with their provisions and stores, 
had to be dragged by main force over the ice by the 
men harnessed to them. 

A second sledge excursion, under Lieut. McClin- 
tock, traveled seven hundred and sixty miles, discov- 
ered forty miles of coast, and achieved the furthest 
westing that had ever been attained in this part of 
the Polar Sea — a point in latitude 74*^ 38^ and longi- 
tude 114^ 20 ^ To the north of Bank's Land and at 
a distance of about seventy miles, he discovered a 
range of land apparently running nearly due west. 
Following the coast of Melville Island to the north- 
east, he entered Liddon Gulf, and here saw fragments 
of coal of good quality. In June he found Parry's 
encampment of 1820, and the " strong but light cart" 
in which Parry carried his tent and stores, and the 
kettle containing the cylinder in which was enclosed 
Parry's record. Placing the kettle over the fire, the 
cylinder was thawed out and the record carefully 
unfolded ; but nothing but the date could be distin- 
guished. McClintock then struck across the land to 
Winter Harbor, another of Parry's encampments, 
which evidently had not been visited since 1820. 
The inscription there cut on a large sandstone boul- 
der was still lec^ible. On the Gth of Jane he started 
to return to the ship, and reached it July 4th. 

These searches having resulted in finding no traces 
of the Erebus and Terror west and noi'th of the mouth 
of Wellington Channel, Austin concluded that they 
had probably steered for the Polar Sea through Jones' 
Sound, and he therefore visited that locality with his 
two steamers. After going up the sound some forty- 
five miles he was arrested by a fixed barrier of ice. 



SIE JOHlSr Ross's EXPEDITION-. 313 

He found no traces of Franklin's party, and, conclud- 
ing that any further effort would be useless, he set 
sail for England where he arrived in the autumn of 
1851. 

Among the searchers for Franklin was the veteran 
Sir John Ross, who sailed from England, April, 1850, 
in a small vessel called the Felix, accompanied by his 
own yacht, the Mary, as a tender. 

Sir John overtook Austin's squadron off the coast 
of Greenland on the 11th of August, and on the 13th 
fell in with, some Esquimaux near Cape York, who 
told him, that in the winter of 1846 two ships were 
crushed in the ice a little further up the coast, and 
their crews, some of whom wore epaulets, killed by 
the natives. A subsequent investigation led Austin 
to believe that the whole story was untrue ; but Ross, 
long after his return to England, adhered to his theory 
that the lost explorers perished in Baffin's Bay in the 
manner indicated by the Esquimaux. 

Ross, however, continued the search as previously 
arranged with Austin, and on the 19th of August 
when off Admirality Inlet, was overtaken by the Ad- 
vance, Lieut. De Haven, at just about the spot where 
Ross had been picked up by the Isabella seventeen 
years before. Ross bore a part in the discoveries 
made at Cape Riley and vicinity, and subsequently 
wintered in the ice near Austin's ships. 

When Ross left England a lady gave him four car- 
rier pigeons, two of which he was to liberate at a 
stated time, and the other two when he found Frank- 
lin. Ross sent off the first pair on the 6th of October 
in a basket suspended to a balloon, during a north- 
west gale. By a slow-matcli arrangement tlie birds 
would be liberated at the end of twenty-four hours. 



314 SEARCHES FOR FRANKLIN. 

On the 13tli of October a pigeon arrived at the dove- 
cot of tlie lady, which she believed to be one of those 
given to Ross. It brought no message, but that w^as 
believed to have been lost during the long transit. 

Another of the expeditions of 1850 was fitted out 
wholly through the efforts of Lady Franklin, and 
mostly at her expense. It consisted of a ship and a 
brig, the Lady Franklin and the Sophia, and was 
placed in charge of Captain Penny, who had had much 
Arctic experience as master of a whaling ship. 

Although the expedition was an independent one, 
Penny co-operated with the others, and after partici- 
pating in the search at Cape Riley his vessels were 
frozen up for the winter a few miles easterly of Aus- 
tin's squadron. 

In the spring, Captain Penny undertook the search 
of Wellington Channel, and on the 17th of April six 
sledge parties started under his general superintend- 
ence. The principal discovery was a wide strait to 
the north of Cornwallis Island, which was named 
Victoria Channel. 

Full of faith that Franklin had gone up this chan- 
nel Penny hastened back to the ships for a boat, which 
he mounted on sledges, and after incredible fatigues 
and tantalizing delays, he launched on the channel 
and examined three hundred and ten miles of the 
coast, when, his provisions failing, he was compelled 
reluctantly to retrace his course. His perseverance 
on this expedition entitles him to an honorable name 
among Arctic explorers. 

On the 12th of August, 1851, the Lady Franklin 
and Sophia, again free from the ice-grip, were started 
homeward, and arrived safely in England about the 
middle of September. 



THE PEI]SrCE ALBERT. 315 

Supplementary to Captain Penny's expedition was 
tliat of the schooner Prince Albert under Captain 
Forsyth. Lady Franklin had still some funds left, 
and thought they could not be better invested than 
in equipping another vessel to go in search of her 
lost husband. Making use of all her available means 
she defrayed about two-thirds of the cost of this 
expedition, and her friends paid the balance. Captain 
Forsyth was ably assisted by Commander W. P. 
Snow, and both were volunteers, who desired no fur- 
ther compensation than the satisfaction of rendering 
aid to a noble man and an equally noble lady. They 
were instructed to examine the shores of Prince Re- 
gent's Inlet, which at the time Franklin sailed was 
supposed to communicate with the Polar Sea through 
Dease's Strait. 

Captain Forsyth sailed from Aberdeen on the 5th 
of June, and on the 21st of August arrived off Port 
Leopold. Here he landed, and found that the house 
constructed by Sir John Ross was in good condition 
to furnish a retreat for Arctic adventures, and the 
stores were abundant and in good order. 

Losing no time here, the Prince Albert boldly en- 
tered Prince Regent's Inlet. When they were sailing 
past Batty Bay the crew were greatly excited by hear- 
ing what they supposed was the firing of a gun on 
shore. The officers directed their glasses to the land, 
but nothing human was to be seen. The howitzer 
was fired, but there was no response, and reluctantly 
they concluded that the noise they had heard was 
occasioned by the falling of a rock or masses of ice. 

When off Fury Beach, the schooner's progress was 
stopped by a dense fog, and when this cleared the 
vessel was found in a bight of ice within a few yards 



316 SEAECHES FOR FRAIS^KLIN. 

of a tummocky field, in wliicli not one crack of open 
water could be seen from the crow's-nest. Forsyth 
and Snow concluded that their mission to Boothia 
was effectually thwarted for that season, and turning 
the bow of the Prince Albert northward, proceeded 
to the vicinity of Cape Riley, where they fell in with 
several vessels of the English and American expe- 
ditions. Learning of the discoveries which had been 
made there but a day or two previously, they joined 
in the search, and then, with some of the relics of 
Franklin's party, started homeward where they arrived 
on the 1st of October. 

One other vessel which was in Barrow's Straits in 
1850 should here be mentioned. The North Star 
left England in 1849, with stores for the expedition 
of James C. Ross, but she was beset by ice in Mel- 
ville Bay and drifted up the coast of Greenland, where 
she wintered in lat. 76^ 33 ^ Four of her crew died 
before she escaped from the ice. She arrived at Port 
Leopold, Aug. 13th, but finding the harbor full of 
ice, proceeded to Navy Board Inlet near Wollaston 
Land, where she put on the mainland her surplus 
stores and fuel. Then scudding before a gale, she 
sailed through Lancaster Sound, and arrived in Scot- 
land on the 28th of September, 1850. 



m^ 




CHAPTEE XXV. 
SEAECHES FOE SIE JOHN FEANKLIN. 

(discovery of a l^OETH-WEST PASSAaE.) 

The Bering's Strait Expedition referred to in the 
last chapter, consisted of two ships, the Enterprise, Cap- 
tain Eichard Collin son, and the Investigator, Command- 
er Eobert McClure. These brave men sailed on their 
benevolent and hazardous mission, January 20th, 1850, 
and made a safe and speedy passage to Bering's Strait. 
On the 28th of August Collinson had reached a posi- 
tion north of Point Barrow, but being unable to pene- 
trate further on account of the ice, he sailed for Grantley 
Harbor, where the Plover was preparing her winter- 
quarters. Here an unsuccessful attempt was made to 
get the Enterprise over the bar at the mouth of the 
harbor; and after consulting with Captains Kellett 
and Moore, of the Herald and Plover, Captain Collin- 
son sailed for Hong Kong, proposing to renew the 
attempt to get north in the spring. 

Meantime the Investigator, having outsailed the 
Enterprise, fell in with the Herald, July 31st, off 
Point Hope, and was seen by the Plover, August 5th, 
1850, in lat. TO'^ 44^, bearing gallantly to the north 
under a press of sail. Nothing further was heard 
of McClure in England until the Autumn of 1853, 

317 



318 SEAECHES FOR FRANKLIISr. 

when Lieut. Cresswell, of the Investigator, arrived 
there with information that McClure and his crew 
had reached Beechey Island, having discovered the 
long sought for North-west passage. 

After passing Point Barrow, some men were sent 
ashore to erect a cairn and bury a notice that the 
Investigator had passed. They were met by three 
natives who gave the usual distant sign of friendship 
by raising their arms three times over their heads, 
and when in close proximity the less agreeable one of 
rubbing noses. They had seen the masts of the 
Investigator the previous evening and wondered at 
the sight, thinking them to be trees in motion. They 
were very friendly but could give no information of 
Franklin, and McClure concluded that none of his 
crew had ever been in that vicinity. " The natives," 
says McClure, " are a kind and merry race, and when 
we gave them presents, we told them that we were 
looking for our lost brothers, and if they saw any 
white men in distress, they were to be very kind; to 
which they assented by sa3dng that they would, and 
would give them plenty of deer's flesh." 

On the 10th of August, Colville River was passed, 
and the color of its waters was discernible at a dis- 
tance of ten miles from the shore. The Esquimaux 
were numerous about the mouth of this river and 
appai'ently had never seen white men before, as they 
manifested great curiosity and had no articles of 
European manufacture. They were eager for traffic, 
sharp at a bargain, and not slow in thieving. Seeing 
some of the sailors cutting tobacco in pieces to give 
in exchange for salmon trout, they began to cut the 
fish also into pieces, and while McClure was placing 
a present in the right hand of the chief, he felt the 



CEUISE OF THE INVESTIGATOE. 319 

fellow's left liand picking his pocket. Tlie chief 
laughed heartily when detected, and seemed to think 
it no crime. 

On the 21st of Aug., the Investigator passed the 
mouth of the Mackenzie River, and soon afterward 
reached Warren Point. As some natives w^ere here 
seen on shore, a boat put off with dispatches which 
McClure wished to have forwarded to the Hudson's 
Bay Company's posts on this river. Instead of making 
the usual friendly sign the natives waved off the 
boats with the most menacing gestures, and were 
only pacified when the interpreter, in full native 
costume, explained the object of the Investigator. It 
was found that these Esquimaux had no intercourse 
with those on the Mackenzie, being at war with them. 
A brass button suspended from the ear of one of the 
chiefs, excited much curiosity, and he told this story 
of its history : It had belonged to a Avhite man who 
had been killed by a native. The stranger was one 
of a party which had landed at Point Warren and 
there built a house, and then gone inland. The man 
killed had strayed from his companions, and the chief 
and his son had buried him upon a hill at a little 
distance. McClure investigated this matter thoroughly, 
but could not ascertain when the murder Avas com- 
mitted, nor find the grave. He found, however, the 
remnants of two huts, which appeared to have been 
built long before Franklin's expedition set out. 

All along this coast the natives were at first hostile, 
but invariably became friendly after a little maneu- 
vering on the part of the interpreter, who generally 
succeeded in so ingratiating himself that the white 
men were treated kindly and often invited to partake 
of native hospitality. Arctic delicacies, such as salmon, 



320 SEAECHES FOR FEANKLIN. 

venison and blubber, were liberally bestowed upon 
tlie officers and crew. The interpreter so won over 
one old cbief, that lie was invited to remain with the 
tribe forever ; as an inducement for him to do so, the 
chief's daughter, a pretty damsel of fifteen years, 
was propounded as a wife, with a dowry of a tent 
and a complete fitting out in the highest Esquimaux 
style. 

On the 6th of September, high land was discovered 
to the north-east. Hitherto the Investigator had been 
sailing along a shore which had been traversed by 
Franklin, Back, Simpson, and others, on foot and in 
boats ; but the land which now appeared on the left 
was terra incognita, McClure therefore hove anchor, 
and on landing took formal possession in the name of 
Queen Victoria, calling it "Baring's Island." It was 
afterwards discovered that they did not land on an 
island, but on the southern shore of Bank's Land. 
The name of the coast was accordingly changed to 
Baring's Land. 

McClure now sailed along the easterly coast of 
Bank's Land, up Prince of Wales Strait, and on the 
17th of September was within thiiiy miles of Melville 
Sound, whose waters connect with Barrow's Strait 
and Lancaster Sound. Here in latitude 73^ 10' and 
longitude 117^ 10' the ice in which the ship was be- 
set ceased to drift to the north, new ice began to 
form, and everything indicated that the Investigator 
was fixed for the winter. Soon afterward, however, 
the ship was carried by a tumultuous drift of the ice 
thirty miles to the south, and on the 28th, was again 
swept northward in close proximity to the cliffs of 
Princess Royal Island. These cliffs rise perpendicu- 
larly from the sea to a height of four hundred feet, 



DISCOVERY OF THE NOETH-WEST PASSAGE. 321 

and as the ship drifted towards them one old sailor 
remarked to a comrade : — " The old craft will double 
up like an old basket when she gets alongside of them 
rocks." 

But a kind Providence saved the vessel, and she 
was swept past the island without striking the cliffs, 
and on the 30th of September brought up near the 
advanced position which she had reached on the l7th ; 
and here the crew of the Investigator passed the 
winter of 1850-51. 

On the 21st of October, 1850, McClure with six 
men and a sledge started in the direction of Melville 
Sound. On the 24th a cape was seen in the distance 
towards which their course was directed, and on the 
night of the 25th they encamped only two miles from 
it. 

The next day opened with a cloudless sky, and 
McClure started early, hoping to obtain sight of a sea 
which would connect his discoveries with those of 
Parry. At an altitude of six hundred feet above the 
water-level, he impatiently waited for light enough to 
discover whether the long sought North-west passage 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific had been found. 

As the sun's light increased the outline of the shores 
became distinctly visible. Bank's Land terminated 
about twelve miles away. At the north lay the 
frozen waters of Melville Sound, and the eyes of the 
eager beholders embraced a distance which precluded 
the possibility of any land lying in that direction 
between them and Melville Island. McClure was 
satisfied that he had discovered the North-west pas- 
sage ; he named the hill from which he gazed Mount 
Observation, and ascertained that it was in latitude 
73^ 30^, and longitude 114^ 39'. From a point in 



322 SEARCHES FOR FRANKLIN". 

Melville Sound to be seen from Mount Observation, 
Parry had sailed eastward into Baffin's Bay and thence 
home ; and McClure had sailed easterly from Bering's 
Strait almost to Parry's starting point and into waters 
connecting therewith. The great problem for the 
solution of which so many Arctic explorers had risked 
their lives was now solved. 

A large cairn was erected, a record of the discovery 
placed therein, and then came the fatiguing return 
journey to the Investigator, during which McClure 
came near perishing. When within a few miles of 
the Investigator he pushed on ahead of his party who 
were slowly drawing the sledge, that he might tell 
his comrades the glorious news; but night overtook 
him ere he reached the vessel, and with it came a 
dense mist which obscured everything. He pushed 
on, guiding his course by the direction of the wind, 
until repeated falls over the rough ice admonished 
him of the danger of broken bones. 

" I now climbed," says McClure, " on a mass of 
squeezed-up ice in the hope of seeing my party, should 
they pass near, or of attracting the attention of some 
one on board the vessel by firing my fowling-piece. 
Unfortunately I had no other ammunition than what 
it was loaded with. After waiting for an hour 
patiently, I was rejoiced to see through the mist the 
glai'e of a blue light, evidently burnt in the direction 
in which I had left the sledc:e. I immediately fired 
to denote my position, but my fire was unobserved, 
and both barrels beino; discharc^ed I was unable to 
repeat the signal. My only hope now rested on the 
ship's answering, but nothing was to be seen, and 
there seemed no probability of my having any other 
shelter for the night that what the floe afl'orded. 



mccluee's night adyentuee. 323 

^'It was now half -past eight. There were eleven 
hours of night before me, a temperature 15^ below 
zero, bears prowling about, and I with an unloaded 
gun in my hands. The sledge party might, however, 
reach the ship, and, finding I had not arrived, search 
would be made and help be sent ; so I walked to and 
fro upon my hummock until, I suppose, it must have 
been eleven o'clock, when that hope fled likewise. 
Descending from the top of the slab of ice upon which 
I had clambered, I found under its lee a famous bed 
of soft, dry snow, and thoroughly tired out, I threw 
myself upon it and slept for perhaps three hours, 
when upon opening my eyes, I fancied I saw the flash 
of a rocket. Jumping upon my feet I found that the 
mist had cleared off, and that the stars and aurora 
borealis were shining in all the splendor of an Arctic 
night. Although unable to see the islands or the 
ship, I wandered about the ice in different directions 
until daylight, when, to my great mortification, I 
found I had passed the ship fully the distance of four 
miles." 

McClure finally reached the Investigator before the 
arrival of the sledge-party, and great was the rejoicing 
on board at the news of the discovery of the North- 
west passage. 

During the winter and spring, sledge-parties were 
sent out in various directions, but no traces of Frank- 
lin were found and no important geographical discov- 
eries made. Reindeer, musk-ox and other animals 
were occasionally met with all through the long Arc- 
tic night, and McClure concluded that it was a mistake 
to suppose that these inhabitants of the Arctic Archi- 
pelago migrated south to avoid the extreme cold of 
the winters. 



324 SEARCHES FOR FRAlS^KLm. 

In July, 1851, the ice-floe in whicli the ship had 
rested began to break np, and on the 17th the ship 
was once more free. But she enjoyed her liberty for 
only a short time, being soon captured by the pack- 
ice and again carried back and forth through Prince 
of Wales Strait as on the previous year. The situa- 
tion was aggravating in the extreme. At times only 
twenty-five or thirty miles separated McClure and his 
crew from an open sea, through which, if they could 
only reach it, they might sail to Baffin's Bay and 
England the same summer. The alternative was to 
pass another gloomy and hazardous winter amid the 
ice. 

But all attempts to get the ship further to the 
north-east than it was drifted by the ice proved 
unsuccessful ; and it turned out that the North-Avest 
passage was not much of a passage after all, so far as 
the Investigator was concerned. The great trouble 
was, that an ice-bridge several miles in length 
obstructed the way. 

McClure now decided to retrace his steps if possible 
to the southerly point of Banks' Land and to sail up 
its western coast. In this attempt he was so success- 
ful, that on the 19th of August he had passed Point 
Kellett, and was rapidly progressing northward 
through a lane of open water nearly ^ve miles wide. 
Soon after this the lead became very narrow and 
much obstructed by floating ice, while the pack, be- 
tween which and a precipitous coast they were sail- 
ing, was of fearful thickness — extending fifty feet 
below the water, which was very deep, and rising in 
places into hills a hundred feet high. The situation 
was full of peril, for had the ice set towards the 
abrupt cliffs along which they were sailing, nothing 
could have saved the ship. 



LIFE AT MERCY BAY. 325 

On the 20tli of August, the Investigator was fast 
"between the ice and the beach at the north-west cor- 
ner of Banks' Land, and remained so till the 29th, 
when the immense iioe to which she had been fastened 
was raised edgeways out of the water by the crowding 
of the surrounding ice, and lifted perpendicularly 
some thirty feet close to the ship's bows. It seemed 
as if the ship must capsize, and had the ice toppled 
over, as appeared lihely, it would have sunk her. 
But the floe, after frightful oscillations, righted itself 
and drifted onw^ard. At another time the wreck of 
the Investigator seemed certain, and all that McClure 
could hope for was ^' that the ship might be throw^n 
up sufficiently to serve as an asylum for the winter." 

At length on the 24th of September, the explorers 
drifted into a large bay on the northern shores of 
Banks' Land, where they found a secure harbor, and 
here they passed the winter. In gratitude for past 
deliverances McClure called the place Mercy Bay. 
Game was abundant, and hunting parties rambled 
over the hills almost daily throughout the winter, 
excepting when prevented by occasional snow-storms, 
or when it was too dark for shooting. Some of the 
hills were three hundred feet high with wild and 
picturesque gorges between them. On their sides 
abundance of wood was found, and in many places 
layers of trees were visible, some protruding a dozen 
feet. One of the largest of these trunks measured 
nineteen inches in diameter. 

The hunters met with various adventures, and one 
poor negro followed a wounded deer so far that he 
became bewildered and could not retrace his steps. 
He was so frightened out of his senses, that when 
found he stood crying, fancying himself frozen to 



326 SEAECHES FOR FRANKLII^. 

death, and could not be induced to make any exer- 
tion to return. In spite of his prayer to be let alone 
to die, his comrade carried and rolled him down the 
hills to the shij), where he soon recovered his strength 
and senses. 

In April, 1852, a sledge journey was made across 
Banks' Strait to Winter Harbor on Melville Island, 
where Parry had wintered. Here a cairn was found 
containing information that Lieut. McClintock of the 
Intrepid had been there on a previous summer. In 
this same cairn McClure deposited a notice of his own 
visit, and of the situation of the Investigator at 
Mercy Bay. This information subsequently led to 
the rescue of himself and crew. 

During the summer of 1852 the scurvy made its 
appearance among the crew. On the 1st of July six 
of the men were confined by it to their beds, and 
numbers more began to feel its symptoms. To add 
to their troubles the summer proved a very cold one, 
and before the close of July it became pretty manifest 
that the Investigator must spend another long winter's 
night in her present moorings. The grip of the ice 
was worse than the grip of the Tartar. During July 
and August the crew were daily employed in gather- 
ing sorrel which grew in the vicinity ; eaten as a salad 
or boiled, it was found to be a most valuable anti-scor- 
butic, and proved an efficient medicine for the scurvy 
patients. Sledging parties were also sent out in hopes 
to accomplish the great mission of the Investigator — 
the finding of Franklin ; but not a trace of his party 
was discovered. 

" Although," says McClure, " we had already been 
twelve months upon two-thirds allowance, it was 
necessary to make preparations for meeting eighteen 



EELIEF AT HAND. 32? 

montlis more ; a very severe deprivation and constitu- 
tional test, but one which the service we were employ- 
ed upon called for, the vessel being as sound as the 
day she entered the ice ; it would, therefore, be dis- 
creditable to desert her in 1853, when a favorable 
season would run her throuojh the straits and admit of 
reaching England in safety, where the successful 
achievement of the long-sough t-f or and almost hope- 
less discovery of the North-west passage would be 
received with a satisfaction that would amply com- 
pensate for the sacrifices made and hardships endured 
in its most trying and tedious accomplishment." 

In November the ship was housed over, and banked 
up with ice and snow, and preparations completed 
for spending a second winter at Mercy Bay. The 
crew kept up their spirits; hunting was again the 
order of the day ; and deer, hares, and ptarmigan were 
plenty. Christmas was celebrated with great edat^ 
and all vied to make it a cheerful and happy one. 
Each mess was gayly illuminated, and decorated with 
original paintings by the lower-deck artist, exhibiting 
the ship in her perilous positions during the transit 
of the Polar Sea, and divers other subjects. Dainties 
in great profusion graced the lower deck, and a stran- 
ger witnessing the scene would hardly suppose that 
he saw a crew which had passed over two years in 
those dreary regions, depending entirely on their own 
resources. 

So passed away the winter of 1852-3 ; and when 

spring came the men were all making preparations 

for carrying out a plan which McClure had previously 

decided on. One-half of the crew and some of the 

officers were to remain with the ship and endeavor to 

liberate it during the summer. The rest of the men 

20 



328 SEARCHES for franklin. 

were to start for England — a part by way of Macken- 
zie Eiver and Canada, and a part by way of Baffin's 
Bay. All were sad at the prospect of separation, for 
the sojourn and the journeys were alike full of gloom, 
and the death, April 5th, of a comrade who had pois- 
oned himself, added to the general depression of spirits. 
But unexpected relief was at hand, and its arrival can 
be best described in McClure's own w^ords : — 

" While walking near the ship, in conversation with 
the first lieutenant upon the subject of digging a grave 
for the man who died yesterday, and discussing how 
we could cut a grave in the ground whilst it was so 
hardly frozen, we perceived a figure walking rapidly 
towards us from the rough ice at the entrance of the 
bay. From his pace and gestures we both naturally 
supposed, at first, that he was some one of our party 
pursued by a bear ; but, as we approached him, doubts 
arose as to who it could be. He was certainly unlike 
any of our men ; but, recollecting that it was possible 
some one might be trying a new traveling-dress pre- 
paratory to the departure of our sledges, and certaiij 
that no one else was near, we continued to advance. 

" When within about two hundred yards of us, the 
strange figure threw up his arms, and made gesticula- 
tions resembling those used by Esquimaux, besides 
shouting at the top of his voice w^ords which, from 
the Avind and intense excitement of the moment, 
sounded like a wild screech : and this brought us both 
fairly to a stand-still. Tlie stranger came rpiietly on, 
and we saw that his face was as black (from lamp-smoke) 
as ebony ; and really, at the moment, we might be 
pardoned for wondering whether he was a denizen 
of this or tho other world ; as it was, we gallantly 
stood our ground, and, had the skies fallen upon us, 



THE ITHTESTIGATOE DESERTED. 329 

we could hardly have been more astonished than 
when the dark-faced stranger called out, ' I'm Lieu- 
tenant Pim, late of the Herald, and now in the Reso- 
lute. Captain Kellett is in her, at Dealy Island.' 

" To rush at and seize him by the hand was the 
first impulse, for the heart was too full for the tongue 
to speak. The announcement of relief being close at 
hand, when none was supposed to be even within the 
Arctic Circle, was too sudden, unexpected, and joyous, 
for our minds to comprehend it at once. The news 
flew with lightning rapidity ; the ship was all in com- 
motion ; the sick, forgetful of their maladies, leaped 
from their hammocks ; the artificers dropped their 
tools, and the lower deck was cleared of men ; for 
they all rushed for the hatchway, to be assured that 
a stranger was actually among them, and that his tale 
was true. Despondency fled the ship, and Lieut. Pim 
received a welcome — pure, hearty, and grateful — that 
he will surely remember and cherish to the end of his 
days." 

Lieut. Pim's companions on this Journey soon 
arrived at the ship, with the Fitzjames, a small 
sledge drawn by dogs. On the 8th of April they set 
out to return to the Eesolute, accompanied by McClure 
and some of his men, and reached their ship on the 
19th. On the 2d of May, an ofiacer arrived from the 
Investigator with news of the death of two more of 
her crew. McClure, with the surgeon of the Resolute, 
then returned to his ship, intending to send home all 
the crew who were unfitted for service, and to allow 
such others as wished to accompany them to do so. 
With the balance he hoped to save his vessel ; but 
on consulting the crew only four were willing to 
remain, although all the ofiicers volunteered to stand 



330 SEARCHES FOR EEAT^KLIN". 

"by their ship. After landing boats and stores for the 
use of Collinson, Franklin, or any other explorer, the 
colors were hoisted to the main-mast on the 3d of 
June, 1853, and the officers and crew, in all sixty 
men, bade farewell to the gallant Investigator and 
started for Dealy Island. 

After sharing the fortunes of Captain Kellett's 
ships, the Resolute and Intrepid, until April, 1854, 
Captain McClure and his men started with sledges, 
for Beechey Island, where they took up quarters on 
the North Star. When that ship, later in the season, 
sailed for England with the crews of five deserted 
vessels, the brave discoverers of a North-west pas- 
sage were among the number. 

It will be remembered by the reader, that Captain 
Collinson of the Enterprise, not succeeding in entering 
the Polar Sea in the fall of 1850, went to Hong Kong 
to winter. In 1851 he sailed north, doubled Point 
Barrow, and following the track of the Investigator 
through the Continental Channel and up Prince of 
Wales Strait, penetrated a few miles further north than 
McClure had gone. But as no passage through the 
ice could be found, he sailed southerly and passed the 
winter of 1851-2 at Walker's Bay, on the eastern 
side of the entrance of Prince of Wales Strait. Search 
expeditions were sent out, and portions of Banks' 
Land, Albert Land, and Victoria Land examined. 

During the next summer, Collinson took his ship 
southerly and easterly through Dolphin and Union 
Strait and Dease Strait, and passed the winter of 1852 
-3 at Cambridge Bay, on the southern coast of Vic- 
toria Land. Fi-om this point sledge parties were sent 
out to explore the western shores of Victoria Strait. 
Had they crossed this Strait to King William's Land^ 



EECENT DEATH OF McOLUKE. 331 

their searcli for traces of tlie lost explorers would have 
been more successful. 

Being unable to force a passage through the ice to 
the eastward the next season, Collin son started for 
Bering's Strait, but the Enterprise was caught in the 
ice before reaching Point Barrow, and a third ^vinter 
was passed on the northern coast of America. 

The exploits of McClure were duly appreciated by 
his countrymen. He received the honors of knight- 
hood, and his commission as Captain was dated back 
to the day when, from a hill on Banks' Land, he 
gazed on a continuous ocean. Gold i^^^^^,als were 
awarded to him by the English and French Greographi- 
cal Societies, and a select committee of the House of 
Commons resolved that the officers and crew of the 
Investigator ^^ performed deeds of heroism which, 
though not accompanied by the excitement and the 
glory of the battle-field, yet rival in bravery and 
devotion to duty, the highest and most successful 
achievement of war." A reward of £10,000 was 
granted to them as a token of national approbation. 

The recent death of Sir Bobert McClure, which 
occurred October l7th, 1873, has occasioned an ill- 
timed controversy as to who is entitled to the honor 
of first discovering a North-west passage. Lady 
Franklin, in a letter to the Times published " before 
McClure's old comrades had had time to turn from 
the grave of the great explorer," claims the honor 
for the last survivors of her husband's expedition. 
The question is not a new one, but its discussion has 
been generally avoided by most of the Arctic writers, 
as they have felt that Franklin and McClure, if living, 
would have no dispute about so small a matter. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 
SEARCHES FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 

(SECOISTD CEUISE OF THE PEINCE ALBERT.) 

The return of the Prince Albert in the fall of 1850 
with relics of Franklin's party gave encouragement 
for a continuation of the search ; and on the 3d of 
June, 1851, the same vessel again sailed for Prince 
Regent's Inlet. Captain Wm. Kennedy, formerly of 
the Hudson's Bay Company, commanded the schooner, 
and v^as assisted by Lieut. J. Bellot, an energetic and 
lively young officer of the French navy, whose love 
of adventure led him to offer his services to Lady 
Franklin. 

The crew were all picked men, and included John 
Hepburn, Franklin's faithful attendant on his first 
overland journey, and other Arctic travelers. Never 
was a vessel manned with a more gallant or more 
resolute company. Lady Franklin herself was present 
to cheer and encoui-age the adventurers, as with the 
English flag at the peak, and the French flag, as a 
compliment to Bellot, at the fore, the Prince Albert 
went forth amid the prayers and best wishes of all 
England. 

On arriving at the entrance to Prince Regent's 
Inlet that channel was found to be much obstructed 

332 



A NIGHT AT CAPE SEPPINGS. 333 

"by ice; but Kennedy pushed boldly in, and pene- 
trated soutlierly along tlie western coast as far as 
Fury Point. He was obliged, however, to beat a 
hasty retreat, to escape being crushed by the ice which 
began to drift toward the shore, and took refuge at 
Port Bowen on the eastern coast. 

To winter at this place while all their searches 
were to be made on the western shore, was an idea 
not to be considered by Kennedy and Bellot. Accord- 
ingly on the 9th of September the attempt to find a 
harboi' on the west side was renewed ; and when near 
Port Leopold, Kennedy with four men succeeded in 
reaching the shore, and on ascending the cliffs of 
Cape Seppings, discovered that Port Leopold was 
free from ice and would afford a good winter harbor 
for the Prince Albert if it could be reached. 

Descending to the shore, what was their consterna- 
tion on finding that the narrow lane through which 
they had rowed their gutta-percha boat was com- 
pletely closed, and that the whole pack was drifting 
down the inlet, carrying the ship with it. Little 
could be seen or heard but the tossing, roaring and 
grinding of huge masses of ice. Night was coming 
on, and to reach the ship was impossible. Nothing 
could be done but to make themselves as comfortable 
for the night as frozen clothes and cold winds would 
allow. The boat was hauled up on shore, and under 
its shelter, but without blankets or coverings of any 
kind, Kennedy and his men made the best of their 
situation. No one was permitted to sleep but an 
hour at a time for fear of being frozen. 

With the dawn of day the shivering party ascended 
the highest cliff of Cape Seppings and strained their 
eyes in search of the Prince Albert. Not a sign of 



334 SEARCHES FOR FRANKLIN. 

the vessel Avas to be seen ; and here they were, alone 
on a bleak coast at the commencement of an Arctic 
winter, without shelter, provisions or fuel, and scan- 
tily clad. Fortunately, Kennedy was aware that two 
years before Sir James K,oss had made a depot of pro- 
visions at Whaler Point on the other side of the har- 
bor. To this depot the little company directed their 
way, and were overjoyed to find plenty of provisions 
and the canvas hut which Ross had erected. 

"It was now," says Kennedy, "the 10th of Septem- 
ber. Winter was evidently fast setting in, and, from 
the distance the ship had been carried during that dis- 
astrous night (whether out to sea or down the inlet we 
could not conjecture) there was no hope of our being 
able to rejoin her, at least during the present season. 
There remained, therefore, no alternative but to make 
up our minds to pass the winter, if necessary, where 
we were. The first object to be attended to was the 
erecting of some sort of shelter against the daily in- 
creasing inclemency of the weather ; and for this pur- 
pose the launch, left by Sir James Ross, was selected. 
Her mainmast was laid on suppoi-ts at the bow and 
stern, about nine feet in height, and by spreading two 
of her sails over this a very tolerable roof was ob- 
tained. A stove was set up in the body of the boat, 
with the pipes running through the roof; and we 
were soon sitting by a comfortable fire, which, after 
our long exposure to the wet and cold, we stood very 
much in need of." 

Cn})tain Kennedy was not the man to sit down idle 
and wait for something to turn up. He immediately 
began devising plans for future operations. The first 
thing was to seai'ch for tlie Prince Albert, and the 
second was to hunt for Franklin. Before either pro- 



bellot's eescue paety. 335 

ject could be carried out it was necessary to provide 
some additional clothing and especially slioes. Ma- 
terial for both was at hand in the shape of canvas, 
and the party passed their days — Sundays excepted 
— in making it up. To their credit, be it said, that 
their Sabbaths were observed strictly as holy time, 
and He who had so wonderfully preserved them in 
their extremity was duly honored. 

While thus busily employed in preparations for 
their exploring expeditions they were suddenly star- 
tled, on the 17th of October, by the firing of a gun in 
the direction of Cape Seppings. Rushing eagerly 
from their house they discovered seven of the Prince 
Albert's men, headed by Lieut. Bellot, who had come 
in search of their lost comrades. The mutual congrat- 
ulations and thanksgivings can be better imagined 
than described. Bellot reported that the Prince Al- 
bert was securely moored in Batty Bay, and that he 
and his men had come up on the ice, dragging a boat 
with them for use if needed. Bellot had made two 
previous attempts to reach Port Leopold, but had been 
baffled once by deep snows, and again by weakness of 
the ice, throup:h which the sledo;:e broke and. was lost. 

Five weeks had elapsed since Bellot had taken 
French leave of his Captain, and unwillingly drifted 
off in the Prince Albert. They were weeks of anx- 
iety, and the reaction of exuberant feeling was great. 
The night was spent under the covering of the old 
launch and her boards reverberated with sea songs 
and hearty laughs, while the lost and found drank hot 
chocolate and feasted on Arctic dainties. 

On the 22d of October the whole party set out for 
Batty Bay, drawing provisions and Bellot's boat on 
a sledge made for the occasion. A mast was erected 



»336 SEAECHES FOE FEAKKLIiq-. 

and sails set, and at times, wlien the ice was smooth 
and the wind strong, the sledge, bearing all the trav- 
elers, sailed off with great rapidity. Unfortunately, 
however, it broke down when near the middle of the 
bay, and it was not safe to spend the night on the 
treacherous ice. Darkness overtook them before 
they reached land, and driving snow made progress 
both difficult and dangerous. Cold and tired they at 
length reached a flat lime-rock, where they spread a 
tent, kindled a fire, boiled some tea and made merry. 

The tent proved too small to lodge thirteen men 
with any comfort to themselves, and Bellot, whose 
tact and good humor were unbounded, resolved "to 
make a night of it." Six men were arranged in a 
sitting posture on each side of the tent, and had be- 
tween them a space about three feet wide in which to 
accommodate the legs of the twelve, and Bellot, who 
chose " a middle passage." All efforts to sleep were 
unsuccessful and songs and merriment prevailed. For 
the want of a candle-stick, each man was to hold the 
candle, for fifteen minutes, and then pass it to his 
neighbor. The candle at length giving out, the men 
tried to get a little rest, but Bellot's jokes were too 
good to allow it. He afterward referred to the night 
on the lime-stone rock, as one of enjoyment on a solid 
foundation. Sleeping in a tent was not repeated, but 
they passed several comfortable niglits in snow houses, 
and on arriving at the ship were heartily welcomed by 
their comrades. 

The ensuing winter was passed in the ice at Batty 
Bay ; and though the night was long and dark, the 
cold winds howled around, and the drifting snow at 
times obstructed all out-door exercise, light, warmth 
and cheerfulness prevailed in the cabin of the Prince 



A VISIT TO FUKY BEACH. 337 

Albert, and occasionally a mock-sun, or "sun-dog," dis- 
pelled the gloom. 

On the 5th of Januar}^ 1852, Kennedy, Bellot, and 
three of the crew, with a sledge drawn by dogs, start- 
ed on an excursion to the south. As they approached 
Fury Beach the leaders impatiently pushed on ahead 
of the sledge, and on the evening of the 8th, stood 
upon the spot where they had hoped to find some of 
Franklin's party. "Every object distinguished by 
the moonlight in the distance," says Kennedy, "be- 
came animated, to our imaginations, into the forms of 
our long-absent countrymen ; for, had they been im- 
prisoned anywhere in the Arctic seas, within a rea- 
sonable distance of Fury Beach, here, we felt assured, 
some of them, at least, would have been now. But, 
alas for these fond hopes ! All was solitary and des- 
olate." 

" Somerset House " was still in existence ; with sad- 
dened feelings Kennedy and Bellot entered its cheer- 
less apartments, and kindled a fire in the same stove 
which warmed the crew of Sir John Ross in the dreary 
winter of 1832-3. After eating their supper, they 
took a few hours repose ; then started back towards 
the sledge party, and all returned to Batty Bay. 

On the 25th of February, Kennedy again started 
south, with five men equipped with snow-shoes, sledges 
and dogs, and was overtaken a few days afterward 
at Fury Beach, by Bellot with seven men. After 
drawing largely on the old stores of the Fury, which 
were abundant and good, although thirty years had 
elapsed since they were left there, the whole party 
started southerly, on the " grand journey," as Bellot 
called it. On arriving at Brentford Bay, eight of the 



338 SEARCHES FOR FRANKLIN. 

men were sent back, and six men, witli sledges drawn 
by dogs, continued the explorations. 

Near tliis bay a strait running westward was found, 
wliicli w^as named Bellot Strait. It separated Nortli 
Somerset from Boothia Felix, and communicated with 
Victoria Strait. Kennedy passed through it, and then 
crossed Victoria Strait to Prince of Wales Land. Af- 
ter continuing westward for thirteen days and reach- 
ing longitude 100^ west without coming to any sea, 
the party turned their course northward, and at last, 
on the 4th of May, arrived at Cape Walker at tlie 
northern extremity of Prince of Wales Land. But 
here, as at Fury Beach, they w^ere much disappointed 
at finding no traces of Franklin's Expedition. 

From Cape Walker the party started eastward, the 
stock of provisions running very low and some of the 
men being sick with the scurvy. On arriving at Cape 
McClintock, they were rejoiced to find a depot of pro- 
visions left there by Captain Ross in 1849. Contin- 
uing on, they arrived at Whaler Point on tlie 1 2th and 
remained there till the 27th, recruiting upon the stores 
and anti-scorbutics which were there found. On the 
30th of May they reached their ship, after an absence 
of ninety-seven days, during which time they had trav- 
eled about eleven hundred miles. 

The Prince Albert remained imprisoned in the ice 
until the Gth of August, and on being liberated sailed 
for home, arriving in England on the 7th of October, 
1852. 



CHAPTER XXYIL 
SEARCHES FOR SIR JOH^ FRANKLIK 

(expeditions of 1852.) 

NoTwiTHSTANDma tlie ill-success and disappointments 
wMcli had thus far attended the searches for Frank- 
lin, the whole English nation was stimulated to make 
one more great effort for his rescue ; and the spring of 
1852 witnessed the departure from England of the 
largest expedition which had ever sailed for the Po- 
lar seas. It was commanded by Sir Edward Belcher, 
and comprised a squadron of three ships — the Assist- 
ance — the Resolute, Captain Kellett — the North Star, 
Captain Pullen ; and two steamers — the Pioneer, 
Lieutenant Osborne — and the Intrepid, Captain Mc- 
Clintock. These five vessels left England on the 28th 
of April, and arrived at Beech ey Island on the 10th of 
August. 

At Beechey Island the ships separated. Belcher 
and Osborne, with the Assistance and Pioneer, pro- 
ceeded up Wellington Channel ; Kellett and McClin- 
tock, with the Resolute and Intrepid, sailed westerly 
toward Melville Island; and the North Star remained 
at Beechey Island as a depot-ship and retreat for any 
of the explorers who might need assistance. 

Belcher's two ships came to anchor in Northum- 

339 



340 SEARCHES FOR FRANKLII^. 

berland Sound on the western sliores of Grinnell 
Land, in latitude 76*^ 52', and here they remained 
through the winter. Exploring parties were sent out 
in every direction during the autumn and ensuing 
summer, who discovered and surveyed much new 
territory. Hopes of being on Franklin's track were 
occasionally raised from finding structures evidently 
erected by human hands but differing from any- 
thing which the Esquimaux were supposed to be 
familiar with. Belcher in describing one of his joui'- 
neys says: — 

" Our progress was tantalizing, and attended with 
deep interest and excitement. In the first place, I 
discovered, on the brow of a mountain about eight 
hundred feet above the sea, what appeared to be a 
recent and very workmanlike structure. This was a 
dome, — or rather a double cone, or ice-house, — built 
of very heavy and tabular slabs, which no single per- 
son could carry. It consisted of about forty courses, 
eight feet in diameter, and eight feet in depth, when 
cleared, but only five in height from the base of the 
upper cone as we opened it. 

" Most carefully was every stone removed, every 
atom of moss or earth scrutinized ; the stones at the 
bottom also taken up ; but without finding a trace of 
any record, or of the structure having been used by 
any human being. It was filled by drift snow, but 
did not in any respect bear the appearance of having 
been built more than a season. This was named 
' Mount Discoveiy.' " 

Soon afterward two structures were found which 
appeared to be graves. '' Each," says Belcher, " was 
like the dome, of large selected slabs, having at each 
end three separate stones, laid as we should place 





■!\.5 V 



' i-^^fet^'pn 




BEECHY ISLAND. 





THE ICE BARRIER. 



CAPTAIISr KELa xt's advejs^tuees. 341 

head and foot stones. So tliorougUy satisfied was I 
that there was no delusion, I desisted from disturbing 
a stone until it should be formally done by the party 
assembled. 

" The evening following — for where the sun is so 
oppressive to the eyes by day we travel by night — 
we ascended the hill, and removed, the stones. Not a 
trace of human beings ! " 

When the Assistance and Pioneer were freed from 
the ice, about the middle of July, Belcher started for 
Beechey Island ; but before he could get there ice ob- 
structed his passage, and his ships were frozen in for 
the winter of 1853-4 at Baring's Bay. 

When spring came on. Belcher determined to get 
his whole command back to England that season ; 
and when his two vessels were liberated from the ice 
on the 6th of August, he again started for Beechey 
Island. But when nearly there an ice-floe, extending 
a distance of twenty miles between him and the open 
water of Barrow's Strait, arrested his progress ; and 
believing that it would be impossible to get the 
Assistance and Pioneer throus^h this ice, Belcher and 
his crews deserted them on the 26th of August 1854, 
and made their way to Beechey Island. 

When Captain Kellet parted from Belcher at 
Beechey Island, in August 1852, he took the Besolute 
and Pioneer to their winter quarters at Dealy Island, 
off the south coast of Melville Island, and immedi- 
ately sent out parties to deposit provisions along the 
coast for the searching expeditions of the ensuing 
spring. McClintock went northerly to Plecla and 
Griper Grulf, and Lieut. Meacham went westerly to 
Liddon Gulf. At Winter Harbor, Meacham visited 
^'Parry's Sandstone," and found on it a small cairn 



\ 

\ 

\ 

\ 

342 SEAECHES rok 'EAJS^KLIN. 

wMcli McCHntock had erected the year before. On 
examining this cairn he found a copper cylinder, in 
which was a roll folded in a bladder. On opening 
this roll, Meacham, to his great astonishment, found 
that it had been left there April 28th, 1852, by 
McClure of the Investigator, and that it contained an 
account of the cruise of that ship since she left Ber- 
ing's Strait in 1850. 

This was a discovery indeed. The Investigator 
had not been heard from for two years, and here was 
information, in the hand- writing of her commander, 
that she was safely moored in Mercy Bay, on the 
opposite side of Banks' Strait, only six months pre- 
viously. More than this — a North-west passage had 
been discovered. Meacham hastened back to his ship 
with the joyful news. 

It was then too late in the season to undertake a 
journey to Mercy Bay, distant one hundred and sev- 
enty miles; but early the next spring, March 10th, 
1853, a " forlorn hope " party of ten men, led by Lieut. 
Pim of the Resolute, started off across the strait to 
search for the Investigator. Little hope of finding 
McClure was entertained, as it was presumed he was 
no longer at Mercy Bay. The labor of dragging their 
large sledge over the broken ice and hummocks was 
most tedious and fatiguing; and when it finally broke 
down, Pim turned it back, and with two men and the 
the little Fitzjames pushed bi'iskly on. 

Banks' Land was reached at last, and then, after 
many more days of weary travel, the Bay of Mercy 
came in view. No ship was seen ; but as the party 
proceeded across the bay in search of records, 
something black was noticed in the distance. On look- 
ing at it through his glass, Pim decided that it was 



ABANDONMENT OF THE SHIPS. 343 

a ship, and liurrying on ahead of his companions, 
met his old friend McClure as already related. 

In April, three other sledge expeditions were sent 
out by Kellett, which thoroughly searched Melville 
Island and all the land to the north and west thereof. 
McClintock was absent one hundred and six days, and 
explored twelve hundred miles of coast ; Meacham 
traveled over a thousand miles in ninety-three days ; 
Lieut. Hamilton made a shorter journey to the north- 
east ; but none of them found any traces of Franklin. 

The ice around the ships did not break up till the 
18th of August, and an attempt was then made to get 
them to Beechey Island ; but it proved unsuccessful, and 
early in September they were again fast in the new 
ice. For two months the ships drifted back and forth 
with the floe, and then came to a stand-still in longitude 
101°, at a place due east of Winter Harbor. Here they 
passed the winter of 1853-4. In the spring, searches 
for Franklin were renewed, and in April, Lieut. Mea- 
cham found at Princess Royal Island, documents left 
by Collinson in August, 1852. 

On returning to the ships, Meacham found all hands 
busy preparing to abandon them, as peremptory orders 
to that effect had been received from Belcher. Every- 
thing about the vessels was put in perfect order; 
and then the hatches were calked down, and Kellett 
and his men started with sledges for Beechey Island 
where McClure and his crew had already gone. 

On Belcher's arrival at Beechey Island, the officers 
and men of the five deserted ships took passage for 
home on the North Star. Just as they were starting, 
two vessels — the Phoenix and Talbot, bringing dis- 
patches and supplies for Belcher^ — hove in sight. 
Thereupon, a portion of the men went aboard Captain 
21 



344 KETUET^ TO ENGLAND. 

Inglefield's ships, and the three sailed for England, 
where they arrived September 28th, 1854. 

Of the five vessels thus abandoned in 1853-4, only 
one has since been heard from. In September, 1855, 
as Captain James Buddington, commander of a New 
London whaler, was drifting in the ice of Baffin's Bay, 
he espied through his glass a ship some twenty miles 
off. For seven days the two ships gradually approach- 
ed each other ; then Buddington sent four of his men 
over the ice to find out what the craft was. As the 
party neared the stranger, after a day's 'journey, they 
found that she was fast in the ice, and apparently 
deserted, as they saw no one and received no answer 
to their shouts. A dread came over the men as they 
climbed upon her decks. Everything was in order; 
and over the helm was the motto, in letters of brass, 
" England expects every man to do his duty." 

On descending to the cabin and striking a light, 
the mystery was solved, for there they found the log- 
book of the Resolute, which had broken from her 
icy fetters and drifted eastward into Baffin's Bay. 

The interior of the Resolute was in a bad condition, 
but Buddino^ton with ten of his crew carried her 
safely to New London after a most uncomfortable 
voyage. The sequel is an honor to both England and 
the United States. The former having released all 
her claims in favor of the salvors, Congress bought 
and refitted the Resolute, and sent her in charge of 
officers and sailors of the U. S. Navy, to England, 
where she was formally presented to Queen Victoria 
in December, 185G. The whole affair was well cal- 
culated to hasten an " era of good feeling " between 
these two nations. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 
SEARCHES FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 

(expeditioists of captain inglefield and dr. eae.) 

Captain Inglefield sailed from England July 6tli, 
1852, in the steamer Isabel, to ascertain if tlie belief 
of Sir Jolm Ross that Franklin had lost his life on the 
western shores of Greenland was well founded. 

On reaching Baffin's Bay, Inglefield pushed boldly 
north to Smith's Sound and examined that noble chan- 
nel — which had hitherto baffled explorers — as far north 
as 78"* 30'. He was at first, deluded with the idea that 
he had found a climate milder than that of Baffin's Bay, 
but this delusion a violent storm soon dispelled. 
Very likely the storm proved his salvation, for other- 
wise he might have pushed on and been ice-anchored 
where escape would have been impossible, and the 
Isabel did not go prepared to pass an Arctic night. 

The gale drove him back none too soon, for the cold 
soon became intense, and the spray froze as it broke on 
the land. Icebergs and loose cakes of ice were all 
around the Isabel and it was only by getting up 
steam by the aid of blubber that she forced a way 
out of her difficulties. 

Inglefield arrived in England Nov. 4th, 1852. His 

345 



846 SEAECHES FOR FEAIN-KLI]^. 

trip was a short one, but it was remarkably success- 
ful, so far as its immediate object was concerned. 

Early in 1853, Captain Ingleiield was again sent 
out in command of the Phoenix and Lady Franklin, 
to reinforce Belcher's squadron. Lieut. Bellot, the 
gallant young Frenchman who had figured so con- 
spicuously in the voyage of the Prince Albert, ac- 
companied Capt. Inglefield, and the saddest incident 
connected with the expedition was the death of this 
hero. In August, 1853, Bellot volunteered to carry 
dispatches from Captain Pullen of the North Star, 
over the ice to Sir Edward Belcher, who was at that 
time near Cape Beecher in Wellington Channel, and 
started from Beech cy Island August 12th, with four 
men named Harvey, Johnson, Madden, and Hook. 
The ice at this season of the year is always treacher- 
ous, and Bellot was cautioned to keep as close as 
possible to the eastern shore of Wellington Channel. 
He encouraged his men with his usual hilanty, and 
put his own shoulder to the tracking lines as they 
plodded along on the ice. 

Approaching Cape Grinnell, Bellot found that there 
was a broad belt of water between the ice and the 
shore. Nothing daunted he pushed out with his In- 
dia-rubber boat, to convey a line to the cape by 
which the remainder of the party and the provisions 
could be dragged over ; but the wind blew furiously 
and he could not, alone, make headway. According- 
ly he remained on the ice, and ordered Harvey and 
Madden to cross over with the line, which they suc- 
cessfully accomplished. Madden remained on the 
shore to hold the line, and three boat loads of pro- 
visions had been conveyed across the water when the 
ice was discovered to be on the move. Harvey and 



DEATH OF BELLOT. 347 

Madden were botli at this time on tlie land, "but of 
course could not liold on to tlie line, thougli Madden 
did not let go till liauled into the water up to 
his waist, when Bellot called to him to let her 
slide. Bellot, Johnson and Hook were now drifting 
to sea on a floe of ice, with a bitter wind driving 
them further and further from hope of escape. 
Madden and Harvey for two hours watched their 
companions drifting away, powerless to render them 
any assistance, and then began to retrace their steps 
to the ship. Taking what provisions they could carry, 
they walked around Griffin Bay and were rounding 
Cape Bowden, when to their surprise they met their 
lost companions Johnson and Hook, whose sad 
countenances too plainly told the story of the third,^ 
the brave and gleeful Lieutenant. 

The account they gave of Bellot' s sad fate was 
briefly this. After finding themselves fairly afloat, 
they made an ice house which might protect them 
from the wind, Bellot cheerfully remarking, " When 
the Lord protects us not a hair of our heads shall be 
touched." They talked over the danger of their situ- 
ation calmly for half an hour, when Bellot said he 
would go out and see how the ice was drifting. In 
a few minutes Johnson followed but could see noth- 
ing of the Lieutenant, but there was a crack in the 
ice near by, some five fathoms wide, and on the op- 
posite side the crack lay Bellot's stick. The wind 
was blowing a gale, and the gallant Frenchman was 
probably blown into the water, and drifted under the 
ice. His companions shouted " Bellot ! Bellot !" but 
there was no response. The floe drifted to Point 
Hogarth, when Johnson and Hook made their escape 
to terra firma. 



348 SEARCHES FOR ERANKLm. 

" Poor Bellot !" " Poor Bellot !" was tlie exclamation 
of all, Esquimaux included, as they learned his un- 
timely end. His was a generous, noble nature. With 
sincere sympathy for Lady Franklin, he entered the 
English service for the sole purpose of aiding in the 
discovery of her noble husband ; and of the many who 
are buried in the waters and frost-bound lands of the 
Arctic regions, the memory of none is cherished more 
ardently by his companions than Lieutenant Bellot. 
England showed her aj)preciation of his services by 
a liberal subscription to his family and by a monu- 
ment to his memory in Greenwich Hospital. 

Inglefield returned to England in the autumn of 
1853. He was accompanied by Lieut. Ores well of 
the Investigator, who carried home dispatches announ- 
cing the discovery of a North-west Passage. 

In 1853, Dr. Eae, who had made a land expedition 
in 1851 in which he had thoroughly ex23lored the 
coast of North America as far east as longitude 110^, 
Avas induced to undertake a similar expedition un- 
der the auspices of the Hudson's Bay Company. His 
former survey had made him thoroughly acquainted 
with the coast, and had proved that he was the right 
man to head another expedition. In this year he 
however advanced only as far as Kepulse Bay, which 
he reached on the 15th of August, and then went into 
winter-quarters. His researches the succeeding sum- 
mer, and his important discoveries, which proved 
to be the key that unlocked the mysterious fate of 
Sir John Franklin, are related in a succeeding chapter. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 
THE FmST AMERICAN EXPEDITION. 

When" tlie year 1848 liad arrived without any 
tidings of Sir John Franklin or his party, Great Britain, 
as heretofore stated, dispatched three expeditions 
to look for them. But peculiar drawbacks seemed 
to attend their efforts, and before the beginning of 
1850 they had all abandoned the search, almost with- 
out attaining the first threshold of inquiry. 

Their failure aroused every where the generous 
sympathies of men. Science felt for its votaries, hu- 
manity mourned its fellows, and an impulse, holier 
and more energetic than either, invoked a crusade 
of rescue. That admirable woman, the wife of Sir 
John Franklin, not content with stimulating the re- 
newed efforts of her own countrymen, claimed the 
co-operation of the world. In letters to the President 
of the United States, full of the eloquence of feeling, 
she called on us, as a " kindred people, to join heart 
and hand in the enterprise of snatching the lost navi- 
gators from a dreary grave." 

The delays incident to much of our national legis- 
lation menaced the defeat of her appeal. The bill 
making appropriations for the outfit of an expedition 
lingered on its passage, and the season for commenc- 
ing operations had nearly gone by. 



350 OEIGIN OF EXPEDITION. 

At this juncture, a noble-spirited mercliant of New 
York fitted out two of his own vessels and proffered 
them gratuitously to the government. Thus prompted 
by the munificent liberality of Mr. Grinnell, Congress 
hastened to take the expedition under its charge, and 
authorized the president to detail from the navy such 
necessary ofiScers and seamen as might be willing to 
engage in it. The command was given to Lieutenant 
Edwin De Haven, and the two vessels, named " Ad- 
vance " and " Rescue," sailed from New York on the 
22d day of May, 1850. 

Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, a native of Philadelphia, 
already distinguished for his world-wide travels, scien- 
tific enthusiasm and gallant bearing, having repeatedly 
volunteered for the service, accompanied the expedi- 
tion as its senior medical officer and naturalist, and 
on his return published its history in the form of a 
" Personal Narrative." From this work we give, by 
permission, in Dr. Kane's own words, a condensed 
account of the 

UNITED STATES GUIITITELL EXPEDITION. 

On the 12th of May, while bathing in the tepid 
waters of the Gulf of Mexico, I received one of those 
courteous little epistles from Washington which the 
electric telegraph has made so familiar to naval oflfi- 
cers. It detached me from the coast survey, and or- 
dered me to " proceed forthwith to New York, for duty 
upon the Arctic Expedition." 

Seven and a half days later, I had accomplished my 
overland journey of thirteen hundred miles, and in 
forty hours more our squadron was beyond the limits 
of the United States : the Department had calculated 
my traveling time to a nicety. 



THE ADVAJS^CE AND EESCUE. 351 

A very few books and a stock of coarse woolen 
clothing, re-enforced by a magnificent robe of wolf- 
skins, that had wandered down to me from the snow- 
drifts of Utah, constituted my entire outfit ; and with 
these I made my report to Commodore Salter at the 
Brooklyn Navy Yard. 

Almost within the shadow of the line-of-battle ship 
North Carolina, their hulls completely hidden beneath 
a projecting wharf, were two little hermaphrodite brigs. 
Their spars had no man-of-war trigness ; their decks 
were choked with half-stowed cargo ; and for size, I 
felt as if I could straddle from the main hatch to the 
bulwarks. 

At this first sight of the G-rinnell Expedition, I con- 
fess that the fastidious experience of naval life on 
board frigates and corvettes made me look down on 
these humble vessels. They seemed to me more like 
a couple of coasting schooners than a national squad- 
ron bound for a perilous and distant sea. Many a 
time afterward I recalled the short-sighted ignorance 
of these first impressions, when some rude encounter 
with the ice made comfort and dignity very secondary 
thoughts. 

The "Advance," my immediate home, had been orig- 
inally intended for the transport of machinery. Her 
timbers were heavily moulded, and her fastenings of 
the most careful sort. She was fifty-three tons larger 
than her consort, the " Rescue ;" yet both together 
barely equaled two hundred and thirty-five tons. 

Of my brother officers I can not say a word. I am 
so intimately bound to them by the kindly and un- 
broken associations of friend and mess-mate, that I 
shrink from any other mention of them than such as 
my narrative requires. All told, our little corps of 



352 LEAVE NEW YORK HAEBOE. 

officers numbered four for each ship, including that 
non-effective limb, the doctor. Our two crews, with 
the aid of a cook and steward, counted twelve and 
thirteen ; giving a total of but thirty-three. 

ADVANCE. 

Officers. 

Lieutenant Commanding — Edwin J. De Haven, commanding the expedition. 
Passed Midshipman — William H. Murdaugh, acting master and first officer. 
Midshipman — William I. Lovell, second officer. 

E. K. Kane, M.D., passed assistant surgeon. 

RESCUE. 

Officers. 

Acting Master — Samuel P. Griffin, commanding the Rescue. 

Passed Midshipman — Robert R. Carter, actmg master and first officer. - 

Boatswain — Henry Brooks, second officer. 

Benjamin Vreeland, M.D., assistant surgeon. 

About one o'clock on the 2 2d of May, the asthmatic 
old steam-tug that was to be our escort to the sea 
moved slowly off. Our adieux from the Navy Yard 
were silent enough. We cost our country no compli- 
mentary gunpowder; and it was not until we got 
abreast of the city that the crowded wharves and 
shipping showed how much that bigger community 
sympathized with our undertaking. Cheers and hur- 
ras followed us till we had passed the Battery, and 
the ferry-boats and steamers came out of their track 
to salute us in the bay. 

The sky was overcast before we lost sight of the 
spire of old Trinity ; and by evening it had clouded 
over so rapidly, that it was evident we had to look for 
a dirty night outside. Off Sandy Hook the wind fresh- 
ened, and the sea grow so rough, that we were forced 
to part abruptly frouL the friends who had kept us 




ADVANCE AND RESCUE AT i^AVY^YARD. 




OUR FIRST lOEBKRG 



THE GOOD-BY. 355 

company. We were eating and drinking in our little 
cabin, when the summons came for them to hurry up 
instantly and leap aboard the boat. The same heavy 
squall which made us cast loose so suddenly the cable 
of the steamer gathered upon us the night and the 
storm together ; and in a few minutes our transition 
was complete, from harbor life and home associations 
to the discomforts and hardships of our career. 

The difference struck me, and not quite pleasantly, 
as I climbed over straw and rubbish into the little pe- 
culium which was to be my resting-place for so long 
a time. The cabin, which made the homestead of four 
human beings, was somewhat less in dimensions than 
a penitentiary cell. There was just room enough for 
two berths of six feet each on a side ; and the area 
between, which is known to naval men as " the coun- 
try," seemed completely filled up with the hinged ta- 
ble, the four camp-stools, and the lockers. A hanging 
lamp, that creaked uneasily on its " gimbals," illus- 
trated through the mist some long rows of crockery 
shelves and the dripping step-ladder that led directly 
from the wet deck above. Every thing spoke of cheer- 
less discomfort and narrow restraint. 

By the next day the storm had abated. We were 
out of sight of land, but had not yet parted with the 
last of our well-wishers. A beautiful pilot-boat, the 
Washington, with Mr. Grinnell and his sons on board, 
continued to bear us company. But on the 25th we 
saw the white flag hoisted as the signal of farewell. 
We closed up our letters and took them aboard, drank 
healths, shook hands — and the wind being fair, were 
out of sight of the schooner before evening. 

I now began, with an instinct of future exigencies, 
to fortify my retreat. The only spot 1 could call my 



356 CREATURE COMFORTS. 

own was the berth I have spoken of before. It was 
a sort of hunk — a right-angled excavation, of six feet 
by two feet eight in horizontal dimensions, let into 
the side of the vessel, with a height of something less 
than a yard. My first care was to keep water out, my 
second to make it warm. A bundle of tacks, and a 
few yards of India-rubber cloth, soon made me an im- 
penetrable casing over the entire wood- work. Upon 
this were laid my Mormon wolf-skin and a somewhat 
ostentatious Astracan fur cloak, a relic of former travel. 
Two little wooden shelves held my scanty library ; a 
third supported a reading lamp, or, upon occasion, a 
Berzelius' argand, to be lighted when the dampness 
made an increase of heat necessary. My watch ticked 
from its particular nail, and a more noiseless monitor, 
my thermometer, occupied another. My ink-bottle 
was suspended, pendulum fashion, from a hook, and to 
one long string was fastened, like the ladle of a street- 
pump, my entire toilet, a tooth-brush, a comb, and a 
hair-brush. 

Now, when all these distributions had been happily 
accomplished, and I crawled in from the wet, and cold, 
and disorder of without, through a slit in the India- 
rubber cloth, to the very centre of my complicated re- 
sources, it would be hard for any one to realize the 
quantity of comfort which I felt I had manufactured. 
My lamp burned brightly ; little or no water distilled 
from the roof; my furs warmed me into satisfaction; 
and I realized that I was sweating myself out of my 
preliminary cold, and could temper down at pleasure 
the abruptness of my acclimation. 

From this time I began my journal. At first its 
entries were little else than a selfish record of personal 
discomforts. It was less than a fortnight since I was 



OFF NEWFOUNDLAND. 357 

under the sky of Florida, looking out on the live oak 
with its bearded moss, and breathing the magnolia. 
Comfortable as my bunk was, compared with the deck, 
I was conscious that, on the whole, I had not bettered 
my quarters. 

But with the 7th of June came fine, bright, bracing 
weather. We were ofi* Newfoundland, getting along 
well over a smooth sea. We had been looking at the 
low hills near Cape Race, when, about noon, a great 
mass of whiteness was seen floating in the sunshine. 
It w^as our first iceberg. It was in shape an oblong 
cube, and about twice as large as Girard College. Its 
color was an unmixed, but not dazzling white : indeed, 
it seemed entirely coated with snow of such unsullied, 
unreflecting purity, that, as we passed within a hund- 
red yards of it, not a glitter reached us. It reminded 
me of a great marble monolith, only awaiting the chisel 
to stand out in peristyle and pediment a floating Par- 
thenon. There was something very imposing in the 
impassive tranquillity with which it received the lash- 
ings of the sea. 

The next day we were off St. John's, surrounded by 
bergs, which nearly blockaded the harbor. A boat's 
crew of six brawny Saxon men rowed out nine miles 
to meet us, and offer their services as pilots. They 
were disappointed when we told them we were " bound 
for Greenland ;" but their hearty countenances bright- 
ened into a glow when we added, " in search of Sir 
John Franklin." 

We ran into an iceberg the night after, and carried 
away our jib-boom and martingale : it was our first 
adventure with these mountains of the sea. We 
thumped against it for a few seconds, but slid oft' 
smoothly enough into open water afterward. 



358 THE AECTIC DAY. 

We were now drawing near to Davis's Straits, and 
the names which recorded our progress upon the charts 
were full of Arctic associations. The Meta Incognita 
of Frobisher and the Cape of God's Mercy greeted us 
from the American coast : Cape Farewell was on our 
starboard quarter, and the " Land of Desolation" nearly 
abeam. 

Our enemies, the icebergs — for we had not yet 
learned to regard them as friends — made their appear- 
ance again on the 16th. One of them was an irreg- 
ular quadrangle, at least a quarter of a mile long in 
its presenting face. 

The night had now left us : we were in the contin- 
uous sunlight of the Arctic summer. I copy the en- 
tries from my journal of the 17th. 

" We are just ' turning in,' that is, seeking our den 
for sleep. It has been a long day, but to me a God- 
send, so clear and fogless. My time-piece points to 
half past nine, and yet the sunshine is streaming down 
the little hatchway. 

"Our Arctic day has commenced. Last night we 
read the thermometer without a lantern, and the 
binnacle was not lighted up. To-day the sun sets 
after ten, to rise again before two; and during the 
bright twilight interval he will dip but a few degrees 
below the horizon. We have followed him for some 
time past in one scarcely varying track of brightness. 
The words night and day begin to puzzle me, as I rec- 
ognize the arbitrary character of the hour cycies that 
have borne these names. Indeed, I miss that soothing 
tranquillizer, the dear old darkness, and can hardly, as 
I give way to sleep, bid the mental good-night which 
travelers like to send from their darkened pillows to 
friends at home. 




THE SUKKERTOPPEN. 




ENTERING DISCO. 




DISCO HUTS. 



THE SUKKERTOPPEN. 361 

On the 20th an unknown schooner came within the 
same dome of mist with ourselves. We had not seen 
a sail since leaving Newfoundland, and the sight 
pleased us. We showed our colors, but the little craft 
declined a reciprocation. 

On the same day, j utting up above the misty hori- 
zon, we sighted the mountainous coast of Greenland. 
It was a bold antiphrasis that gave such a vernal title 
to this birth-place of icebergs. Old Crantz, the quaint- 
est, and, in many things, the most exact of the mis- 
sionary authorities, says that it got the name from the 
Norsemen, because it was greener than Iceland — a poor 
compliment, certainly, to the land of the Geysers I 

We first made the coast near Sukkertoppen, a re- 
markable peak, called so, perhaps, because its form is 
not unlike that of a sugar-loaf, perhaps because its 
top is whitened with the snow. Mountains that mark 
their unbroken profile on the distant sky are very apt 
to suggest these fanciful remembrances to the naviga- 
tor ; and it is probably this which makes their names 
so frequently characteristic. 

This peak is a noted landmark, and gives its name 
to the entire district it overlooks. Our own observa- 
tions confirm those of Graah and Ross, which place it 
in latitude 65° 22' north, longitude 53° 05' west. It 
may be seen under ordinary circumstances many miles 
out to sea. 

We were favored in our view of the Sukkertoppen. 
We had approached it through an atmosphere of fog ; 
and when the morning of the 23d gave us a clear sky, 
we found ourselves close upon the beach, so close that 
we could see the white surf mingling with the snow 
streaks. A more rugged and inhospitable region nev^er 
met my eye. Its unyielding expression differed from 



362 THE SUKKERTOPPEN. 

any that belongs to the recognized desert, the Sahara, 
or the South American Arridas ; for in these tropical 
wastes there is rarely wanting some group of Euphor- 
bia or stunted Gum Arabic trees, to qualify by their 
contrast the general barrenness. It was startling to 
see, beneath a smiling sun and upon the level of the 
all-fertilizing sea, an entire country without an ap- 
parent trace of vegetable life. 

On the 24th, the sun did not pass below the horizon. 
We had already begun to realize that power of adap- 
tation to a new state of things, which seems to be a 
distinguishing characteristic of man. We marked our 
day by its routine. Though the temptation to avoid 
a regular bed-hour was sometimes irresistible, yet sev- 
en bells always found us washing by turns at our one 
tin wash-basin : at eight bells we breakfasted ; at 
eight again we called to grog; two hours afterward 
we met at dinner ; and at six o'clock in the afternoon 
we came with laudable regularity to our salt junk and 
coffee. 

Our daily reckoning kept us advised of the recur- 
ring noonday, the meridian starting-point of sea-life ; 
and our indefatigable master had his unvarying hour 
for winding up and comparing the chronometers. It 
is hard not to mark the regulated steps of time, where 
such a man-of-war routine prevails ; and I can scarce- 
ly understand the necessity for the twenty-four hours' 
registering dial-plate, which Parry and others carried 
with them, to avert the disastrous consequences of a 
twelve hours' skip in their polar reckonings. 

We had now been a month and a day out from New 
York. Our immediate destination was the Crown 
Prince Islands, more generally known by the misno- 
mer of the Whale Fish. This little group is situated 



CROWN PRINCE ISLANDS. 363 

in the Bay of Disco, thirty miles south of the island 
of that name. 

The entrance to the anchorage from the southwest 
is hetween two islands, and the harbor, which is com.- 
pletely sheltered from ice, is formed, as will be seen 
from the sketch, by the conjunction of a third. On 
turning the corner, we suddenly came upon a wood- 
en store-house for oil and skins ; and opposite to it, 
a clumsy-looking collier, moored stem and stern by 
hawsers leading to rocks on either side of the channel. 
Soon after, we were boarded by Lieutenant Power, of 
the British navy, and from him we learned that the 
clumsy craft was the Emma Eugenia, a provision 
transport chartered by the Admiralty, and that in less 
than a week she would take our letters to England. 

We learned, too, that the British relief squadron 
under Commodore Austin had sailed the day before 
for the regions of search. They had left England on 
the 6th of May, or seventeen days before our own de- 
parture from New York. 

While we were standing upon deck, waiting for 
the boat to be manned which was to take us to the 
shore, something like a large Newfoundland dog was 
seen moving rapidly through the water. As it ap- 
proached, we could see a horn-like prolongation bulg- 
ing from its chest, and every now and then a queer 
movement, as of two flapping wings, which, acting 
alternately on either side, seemed to urge it through 
the water. Almost immediately it was alongside of 
us, and then we realized what was the much talked- 
of kayack of the Greenlanders. 

It was a canoe-shaped frame-work, carefully and en* 
lively covered with tensely-stretched seal-skins, beau- 
tiful in model, and graceful as the nautilus, to which 

22 



364 KAYACKS. 

it has been compared. With the exception of an ellip- 
tical hole, nearly in its centre, to receive its occupant, 
it was both air and water tight. Into this hole was 
wedged its human freight, a black-locked Esquimaux, 
enveloped in an undressed seal-skin, drawn tightly 
around the head and wrists, and fastened, where it 
met the kayack, ahout an elevated rim made for the 
purpose, over which it slipped like a bladder over the 
lip of a jar. 

The length of the kayack was about eighteen feet, 
tapering fore and aft to an absolute point. The heam 
was hut twenty-one inches. When laden, as we saw 
it, the top or deck was at its centre but two inches 
by measurement above the water-line. The waves 
often broke completely over it. A double-hladed oar, 
grasped in the middle, was the sole propeller. It was 
wonderful to see how rapidly the will of the kayacker 
communicated itself to his little bark. One impulse 
seemed to control both. Indeed, even for a careful 
observer, it was hard to say where the boat ended or 
the man commenced ; the rider seemed one with his 
frail craft, an amphibious realization of the centaur, 
or a practical improvement upon the merman. 

These boats, not only as specimens of beautiful na- 
val architecture, but from their controlling influence 
upon the fortunes of their owners, became to me sub- 
jects of careful study. I will revert to them at an- 
other time. As we rowed to the shore, crowds of them 
followed us, hanging like Mother Carey's chickens in 
our wake, and just outside the sweep of our oars. 

We landed at a small cove formed by two protrud- 
ing masses of coarsely granular feldspar. Some forty 
odd souls, the men, women, and children of the entire 
settlement, received us. The men were in the front 



THE LANDING. 3G5 

rank ; tlie women, with their infants on tlieir backs, 
came next : and behind them, in yelling phalanx, the 
children. Still further back were crowds of dogs, 
seated on their hannches, and howling in nnison with 
their masters. 

The one feeling which, I venture to say, pervaded 
us all, to the momentary exclusion of every thing else^ 
was disgust. Offal was strewn around without regard 
to position ; scabs of drying seal-meat were spread over 
the rocks ; oil and blubber smeared every thing, from 
the dogs' coats to their masters' ; animal refuse tainted 
all we saw ; and we afterward found, while botaniz- 
ing among the snow valleys, bones of the seal, walrus, 
and whale, buried in the mosses. 

But if filth characterized the open air, what was it 
in the habitations ! One poor family had escaped to 
their summer tent, pitched upon an adjacent rock that 
overlooked the sea. Within a little area of six feet 
by eight, I counted a father, mother, grandfather, and 
four children, a tea-kettle, a rude box, two rifles, and 
a litter of puppies. 

This island is used by the Danes as a sort of fishing 
station, where one European, generally a carpenter or 
cooper, presides over a few families of Esquimaux, who 
live by the chase of the seal. This functionary had 
a hut built of timber, which we visited. Except the 
oil-house, which we had observed before, it was the 
only wooden edifice. 

The natives, if the amalgamation of Dane and Es- 
quimaux can be called such, spend their summer in 
the reindeer tent, their winters in the semi-subterra- 
nean hut. These last have not been materially im- 
proved since the days of Egede and Fabricius. A * 
square inclosure of stone or turf is raftered over with 



306 



THE DWELLNGS. 



drift-wood or whalebones, and then roofed in with 
earth, skins, mosses, and broken-up kayack frames. 
One small aperture of eighteen inches square, cover- 
ed with the scraped intestines of the seal, forms the 
window ; and a long, tunnel-like entry, opening to the 
south, and not exceeding three feet in height, leads 
to a skin-covered door. Inside, perched upon an ele- 
vated dais or stall, with an earthen lar^ip to establish 
the "focus," several families reside together. 




CHART OF THE WUALK-FISII ISLANDS. 



LIEVELY. • 36? 

Our commander intended to remain at the Crown 
Prince Islands no longer than was absolutely neces- 
sary for our consort, the Rescue, to rejoin us; but, 
upon reviewing our hurried preparation for the hard- 
ships of the winter, he determined, with characteristic 
forethought, to send a boat party to the settlement of 
Lievely, or Godhavn, on the neighboring island of 
Disco, for the double purpose of collecting information 
and purchasing a stock of furs. The execution of 
this duty he devolved upon me. 

We started on the 27th, Mr. Lovell, myself, an Es- 
quimaux pilot, and a crew of five men. As we rowed 
along the narrow channels before we emerged from 
this rocky group, I observed for the first time that 
extreme transparency of the water which has so often 
been alluded to by authors as characteristic of the Po- 
lar Seas. At the depth of ten fathoms every feature 
of the bottom was distinctly visible. 

Even for one who has seen the crimson dulses and 
coral groves of the equatoricd zones, this arctic growth 
had its rival beauties. Enormous bottle-green fronds 
were waving their ungainly lengths above a labyrinth- 
ine jungle of snake-like stems; and far down, where 
the claws of the fucus had grappled the round gneis- 
ses, great glaring lime patches shone like upset white- 
wash upon a home grassplot. 

It was a rough sail outside. The bergs w^ere nu- 
merous ; and the heavy sea way and eddying current, 
sweeping like a mill-race along the southern face of 
the island, made us barely able to double the entrance 
to the little harbor. We did double it, however, and 
by a sudden transition found ourselves in a quiet land- 
locked basin, shadowed by wall-like hills. 

Snow, as usual, covered the lower slopes ; but, cheer- 



368 DISCO. 

ful in spite of its cold envelope, rose a group of rude 
houses, mottling the sky with the comfortable smoke 
of their huge chimneys. Among the most conspicu- 
ous of these was one antique and gable fronted, with 
timbers so heavy and besmeared with tar, that it 
seemed as if built from the stranded wreck of a vessel. 
Little man-of-war port-holes, recessed into its wooden 
sides, and a flag-staff, as tall as the mast of a jolly- 
boat, gave it dignity. This was the house of the 
" Royal Inspector of the Northern portions of Davis s 
Straits;" whose occupant — well and kindly remem- 
bered by all of us — no less than the royal inspector 
himself, stood awaiting our landing. 

The incumbent, Mr. Olrik, was an accomplished and 
hospitable gentleman, well read in the natural sci- 
ences, and an acute observer. In a few minutes we 
were seated by a ponderous stove, and in a few more 
discussing a hot Eider duck and a bottle of Latour. 

Upon commencing my negotiations as to furs, the 
object of my journey, I learned that the reindeer do 
not abound on the island of Disco as in the days of 
Crantz and Egede ; though to the south, about Bunke 
Land, and the fiords around Holsteinberg, and to the 
north of the Waigat, they are still very numerous. 
Nevertheless, by drumming up the resources of the 
settlement, we obtained a supply of second-hand late 
summer skins ; and with these, aided by the seal, soon 
fitted out a wardrobe. 

Of Disco, save its Esquimaux huts, its oil-house, its 
smith-sliop, its little school, and its gubernatorial man- 
sion, I can say but little. It is the largest circum- 
navigable island on the coast of Greenland. Its long 
diameter is from the northwest to southeast, and its 
eastern edge is in a continuous line with the coast to 




inspectors' house, lievely. 



-■*- M/^ 'iOt 



•'i.>5-<i 



V 



v ^ 



Jl,..^ -^--^ 



<*^\^' 



AMONG THE BERGS. 




GROUP OF SEALS. 



DISCO. 371 

the north and south. It is rendered insular by a large 
strait, called the Waigat, which inosculates with the 
bay. 

So much for Disco. Paul Zachareus, long-haired, 
swarthy, Christian Paul, said that the wind was fair: 
Lovell, like a good sailor, exercised his authority over 
the doctor: the furs were packed, my sketches and 
wet hortus siccus properly combined, and we started 
again for our little brig. 

We left the Whale-fish Islands on the 29th, in com- 
pany with the Rescue. On the 30th we doubled the 
southwest cape of Disco, and stood to the northward, 
through a crowd of noble icebergs. On the first of 
July, early in the morning, we encountered our first 
field-ice. From this date really commenced the char- 
acteristic voyaging of a Polar cruise. 







CHAPTER XXX. 

THE FIRST AMERICAN EXPEDITION. 

(continued.) 

''July 1. This morning was called on deck at 4 A.M. 
by our commander. 

" About two hundred yards to the windward, form- 
ing a lee-shore, was a vast plane of undulating ice, in 
nowise differing from that which we see in the Dela- 
ware when mid-winter is contending with the ice- 
boats. There was the same crackling, and grinding, 
and splashing, but the indefinite extent — an ocean in- 
stead of a river — multiplied it to a din unspeakable ; 
and with it came a strange undertone accompaniment, 
a not discordant drone. This was the floe ice ; per- 
haps a tongue from the ' Great Pack,' through which 
we are now every day expecting to force our way. A 
great number of bergs, of shapes the most simple and 
most complicated, of colors blue, white, and earth- 
stained, were tangled in this floating field. Such, 
however, was the inertia of the huge masses, that the 
sheet ice piled itself up about them as on fixed rocks. 

" The sea immediately around, saving the ground- 
swell, was smooth as a mill-pond ; but it was studded 
over with dark, protruding little globules, about the 
size of hens' eggs, producing an efl'ect like the dimples 
of so many overgrown rain-drops fallen on the water. 
These, as I afterward found, were rounded fragments 
of transparent and fresh-w^ater ice, the debris and de- 

(372) 




GLAOiEKS Oi<' JACOB S lilGHT. 




omenak's fiord. 375 

tritus of the bergs. We sailed along this field about 
ten miles, 

" At 9 P. M. the fogs settled around us, and we en- 
tered again upon an area full of floating masses of 
berg. As it was impossible to avoid them, they gave 
us some heavy thumps. 

"At 11 we cleared the fioes, and, favored with a free 
wind, found ourselves nearly opposite Omenak's Fiord, 
a noted seat of iceberg growth and distribution." 

How far we were from land I could not tell ; but 
we saw distinctly the configuration of the hills and 
the deep recesses of the fiord. The sun, although 
nearing midnight, was five degrees above the horizon, 
and threw its rich colorins: over the snow. Manv 
large bergs were moving in procession from the fiord, 
those in the foreground in full sunshine, those in the 
distance obscured by the shadow of their parent hills. 

Omenak's Fiord, known as Jacob's Bight, is one of 
the largest of those strange clefts, which, penetrating 
the mountain range at right angles to its long axis, 
form so majestic a feature of Greenland scenery. Its 
inland termination has never been reached ; and it is 
supposed by Scoresby to be continuous with the large 
sounds, which on a corresponding parallel (70° 40') 
enter from the eastern coast. 

It is up this fiord, probably in the chasms of the 
trap, that those enormous glaciers accumulate which 
have made Jacob's Bight, perhaps, the most remarka- 
ble locality in the genesis of icebergs on the face of 
the globe. It is not uncommon to have the shore here 
completely blocked in by these gigantic monsters : I 
myself counted in one evening, the 3d of July, no less 
than two hundred and forty of primary magnitude, 
from the decks of our vessel. 



376 FORMATION OF ICEBERGS. 

The glaciers which abut upon this sound are prob- 
ably offsets from an interior mer de glace. The val- 
leys or canals which conduct these offsets were de- 
scribed to me as singularly rectilinear and uniform in 
diameter, a fact which derives ready confirmation from 
the known confiii^uration of a dioritic country. Now 
the protrusion of these abutting faces into the waters 
of the sound has been a subject of observation among 
both Danes and Esquimaux. Places about Jacob's 
Harbor, remembered as the former seats of habitation, 
are now overrun by glaciers ; and Mr. Olrik told me 
of a naked escarpment of ice, twelve hundred feet 
high, which he had seen protruding nearly half a mile 
into the sea. 

The materials thus afforded in redundant profusion 
are rapidly converted into icebergs. The water at the 
bases of these cliffs is very deep — I have in my note- 
book well-established instances of three hundred fath- 
oms ; and the pyramidal structure of the trap is such 
as to favor a precipitous coast line. The glacier, thus 
exposed to a saline water base of a temperature above 
the freezing point, and to an undermining wave ac- 
tion, aided by tides and winds, is of course speedily 
detached by its own gravitation. 

July 2. The next day Ave passed this fiord and stood 
on our course beyond an imposing headland, known 
on the charts as Cape Cranstown, tlirough a sea un- 
obstructed by floe ice, but abounding in- bergs. 

In the afternoon the wind subs' cled into a mere 
cat's-paw, and we were enabled to visit several of the 
icebergs. Certain it is that no objects ever impressed 
me more. There was something about them so slum- 
berous and so pure, so massive yet so evanescent, so 
majestic in their cheerless beauty, without, after all, 



ICEBERG SCENERY. 377 

any of the salient points which give character to de- 
scription, that thej almost seemed to me the mate- 
rial for a dream, rather than things to be definitely 
painted in words. 

The first that we approached was entirely inaccess- 
ible. Our commander, in whose estimates of distance 
and magnitude I have great confidence, made it nearly 
a mile in circumference. 

The next was a monster ice mountain, at least two 
hundred feet high, irregularly polyhedral in shape, 
and its surface diversified with hill and dale. Upon 
this one we landed. I had never appreciated before 
the glorious variety of iceberg scenery. The sea at 
the base of this berg was dashing into hollow caves 
of pure and intense ultramarine ; and to leeward the 
quiet water lit the eye down to a long, spindle-shaped 
root of milky whiteness, which seemed to dye the sea 
as it descended, until the blue and white were mixed 
in a pale turkois. Above, and high enough to give 
an expression akin to sublimity, were bristling crags. 

The general color of a berg I have before compared 
to frosted silver. But when its fractures are very ex- 
tensive, the exposed faces have a very brilliant lustre. 
Nothing can be more exquisite than a fresh, cleanly- 
fractured berg surface. 

Voyagers speak of the effects of Arctic refraction in 
language as exact and mathematical as their own cor- 
rection tables. It almost seems as if their minute ob- 
servations of dip-sectors and repeating-circles had left 
them no scope for picturesque sublimity. This may 
excuse a literal transcript from my diary, which runs 
perhaps into the other extreme. 

'^ Friday, 11 P.M. A strip of horizon, commencing 
about 8° to the east of the sun, and between it and 



378 WONDERS OF REFRACTION. 

the land, resembled an extended plain, covered with 
the debris of ruined cities. No effort of imagination 
was necessary for me to travel from the true watery 
horizon to the false one of refraction above it, and 
there to see huge structures lining an aerial ocean- 
margin. Some of rusty, Egyptian, rubbish-clogged 
propyla, and h3'p[Bthral courts — some tapering and 
columnar, like Palmyra and Baalbec — some with 
architrave and portico, like Telmessus or Athens, or 
else vague and grotto-like, such as dreamy memories 
recalled of Ellora and Carli. 

" I can hardly realize it as I write ; but it was no 
trick of fancy. The things were there half an hour 
ago. I saw them, capricious, versatile, full of forms, 
but bright and definite as the phases of sober life. 
And as my eyes ran round upon the marvelous and 
varying scene, every one of these well-remembered 
cities rose before me, built up by some suggestive feat- 
ure of the ice. 

"An iceberg is one of God's own buildings, preach- 
ing its lessons of humility to the miniature structures 
of man. Its material, one colossal Pentelicus ; its mass, 
the representative of power in repose ; its distribution, 
simulating every architectural type. It makes one 
smile at those classical remnants which our own pe- 
riod reproduces in its Madeleines, Walhallas, and Gi- 
rard colleges, like university poems in the dead lan- 
guages. Still, we can compare them with the iceberg; 
for the same standard measures both, as it does Cliim- 
borazo and the Hill of Howth. But this thing of re- 
fraction is supernatural throughout. The wildest frolic 
of an opium-eater's revery is nothing to the phantas- 
magoria of the sky to-night. Karnaks of ice, turned 
upside down, were resting upon rainbow-colored ped- 



OFF UPERNAYIK. 379 

estals : great needles, obelisks of pure whiteness, shot 
up above their false horizons, and, after an hour-glass- 
like contraction at their point of union with their du- 
plicated images, lost themselves in the blue of the 
upper sky. 

" While I was looking — the sextant useless in my 
hand, for I could not think of angles — a blurred and 
wavy change came over the fantastic picture. Pris- 
matic tin tings, too vague to admit of dioptric analysis, 
began to margin my architectural marbles, and the 
scene faded like one of Fresnel's dissolving views. 
Suddenly, by a flash, they reappeared in full beauty ; 
and, just as I was beginning to note in my memo- 
randum-book the changes which this brief interval 
had produced, they went out entirely, and left a nearly 
clear horizon." 

The 6th of July found us in latitude 72° 54', beat- 
ing to windward, as usual, between " the pack " and 
the land. This land was of some interest to us, for 
we were now in the neighborhood of the Danish set- 
tlement of Upernavik. 

With the exception of one subordinate station, eight- 
een miles further to the north, this is the last of the 
Danish settlements. It is the jumping-oif place of Arc- 
tic navigators — our last point of communication with 
the outside world. Here the British explorers put the 
date to their oflicial reports, and send home their last 
letters of good-by. We sent ours without the delay 
of seeking the little port; for a couple of kayacks 
boarded us twenty miles out to sea, and for a few bis- 
cuits gladly took charge of our dispatches. The hon- 
esty of these poor Esquimaux is proverbial. Letters 
committed to their care are delivered with unerring 
safety to the superintendent of the port or station. 



380 FAST IN THE ICE. 

We were boarded, too, by an ooniiak, or woman's 
boat, returning from a successful seal hunt. From 
the crew, consisting of three women and four men, 
we purchased a goodly stock of eider eggs and three 
young seals. 

July 7. We had now passed the seventy-third de- 
gree of latitude without being materially retarded by 
ice. The weather was one unbroken sunshine, and 
worthier of the Bay of Naples than Baffin's. The 
coast on our right hand consisted of low islands, so 
grouped as to resemble continuous land. To our left 
was a coast of a different character — the ice. 

On the morning of the 7th, a large vacant sheet of 
water showed itself to -the westward, penetrating the 
ice as far as the eye could reach ; and from the top- 
mast-head we could see the southern margin of this 
ice losing itself in a clear, watery horizon. It was a 
strong temptation. Our commander determined to 
try for a passage through. 

" We now entered fairly the so-thought open water, 
keeping the shore on our starboard beam, and steering 
for the northeast and north, at a rate of six knots, 
through an apparently unobstructed sea. But the 
sanguine anticipations of our commander were soon 
to be moderated. By four in the afternoon, after plac- 
ing at least fifty miles between us and the coast, the 
leads began to close around us. Fearing a separation 
from the Rescue, we took her in tow and continued 
our efforts ; but from 5 P. M. until the termination of 
the day, our progress was absolutely nothing. The 
morning of the 8th opened upon us fast in summer 
ice. 

" July 9. Although we commenced bright and early 
to warp our \vay through the impacted ice, we found, 



''tracking. ' 





OOMIAK, OR woman's BOAT, 



ARCTIC NAVIGATION. 383 

after much labor, that the entire day's reward was 
about three miles. We are now again fast, completely 
^ beset/ and only waiting to rest the crew before we 
renew our efforts." 

What these efforts wxre it may be as well to ex- 
plain, for the benefit of fireside navigators, and perhaps 
some others. Those who go down to the sea in ships 
know that it is easy enough to drive along in a clear 
sea on a free wind, or to haul into dock, or to warp up 
a quiet river, butting aside the lazy vessels as they 
swing at anchor. How do we sail, and haul, and warp 
in these Arctic Seas ! 

Let us begin by imagining a vessel, or, for variety, 
two of them, speeding along at eight knots an hour, 
and heading directly for a long, low margin of ice 
about two miles off. ^^D'ye see any opening?" cries 
the captain, hailing an officer on the foretopsail-yard. 
" Something like ' a lead ' a little to leeward of that 
iceberg on our port-bow\" In a little while we near 
the ice ; our light sails are got in, our commander 
taking the place of the officer, who has resumed his 
station on the deck. 

Before you, in a plain of solid ice, is a huge iceberg, 
and near it a black, zigzag canal, checkered with re- 
cent fragments. 

Now commences the process of "conning." Such 
work with the helm is not often seen in ordinary seas. 
The brig's head is pointed for the open gap ; the watch 
are stationed at the braces ^ a sort of silence prevails. 
Presently comes down the stentorian voice of our com- 
mander, " Hard-a-starboard," and at the same moment 
the yards yield to the ready haul at the braces. The 
brig turns her nose into a sudden indentation, and 
bangs her quarter against a big lump of " swashing " 



384 ARCTIC NAVIGATION. 

ice. " Steady there ! " For half a minute not a sound, 
until a second yell — " Down, down ! hard dow^n ! " and 
then we rub, and scrape, and jam, and thrust aside, 
and are thrust aside ; but somehow or other find our- 
selves in an open canal, losing itself in the distance. 
This is "a lead." 

As w^e move on, congratulating ourselves — if we 
think about the thing at all — that we are " good " for 
a few hundred yards more, a sudden exclamation, ad- 
dressed to nobody, but sufficiently distinctive, comes 
from the yard-arm (we'll call it " pshaw ! "), and, look- 
ing ahead, we see that our " lead " is getting narrow^er, 
its sides edging toward each other — it is losing its 
straightness. At the same moment comes a compli- 
cated succession of orders : " Helm-a-starboard ! " 
"Port!" "Easy!" "So!" " Steadie-ce-ee ! '' "Hard- 
a-port ! " " Hard, hard, hard ! " (scrape, scratch, thump ! ) 
"Eugh!" an anomalous grunt, and we are jammed 
fast between two great ice-fields of unknow^n extent. 
The captain comes down, and we all go quietly to 
supper. 

Next come some processes unconnected wdth the 
sails, our wings. These will explain, after Arctic 
fashion, the terms " heave," and " w^arp," and " track," 
and " haul," for we are now beset in ice, and what lit- 
tle wind w^e have is dead ahead. A couple of hands, 
under orders, of course, seize an iron hook or " ice-an- 
chor," of which we have two sizes, one of forty, and 
another of about a hundred pounds. With this they 
jump from the bows, and *^ plant it " in the ice ahead, 
close to the edge of the crack, along w^hich we wish 
to force our way. Once fast, you slip a hawser around 
its smaller end, and secure it from slips by a " mous- 
ing " of rope-yarn. The slack of the hawser is passed 



HEAVING AND WARPING. 385 

around the shaft of our patent winch — an apparatus 
of cogs and levers standing in our bows — and every 
thing, in far less time than it has taken me to describe 
it, is ready for " heaving." 

Then comes the hard work. The hawser is hauled 
taut; the strain is increased ; every body, captain, cook, 
steward, and doctor, is taking a spell at the "pump 
handles " or overhauling the warping gear ; for dignity 
does not take care of its hands in the middle pack; 
until at last, if the floes be not too obdurate, they 
separate by the wedge action of our bows, and we 
force our way into a little cleft, which is kept open on 
either side by the vessel's beam. But the quiescence, 
the equilibrium of the ice, which allows it to be thus 
severed at its line of junction, is rare enough. Often- 
times we heave, and haul, and sweat, and, after parting 
a ten-inch hawser, go to bed wet, and tired, and dis- 
contented, with nothing but experience to pay for our 
toil. This is "warping." 

But let us suppose that, after many hours of this 
sort of unprofitable labor, the floes release their press- 
ure, or the ice becomes frail and light. " Get ready 
the lines ! " Out jumps an unfortunate with a forty- 
pound " hook " upon his shoulder, and, after one or two 
duckings, tumbles over the ice and plants his anchor 
on a distant cape, in line with our wished-for direction. 
The poor fellow has done more than carry his anchor ; 
for a long white cord has been securely fastened to it, 
which they "pay out" from aboard ship as occasion 
requires. It passes inboard through a block, and then, 
with a few artistic turns, around the capstan. Its 
"slack" or loose end is carried to a little windlass at 
our main-mast. Now comes the warping again. The 

first or heavy warping we called "heaving:" this last 

2io 



386 PROSPECT OF ESCAPE. 

is a civilized performance; "all hands" walking round 
with the capstan-bars to the click of its iron pauls, or 
else, if the watch be fresh, to a jolly chorus of sailors' 
songs. 

We have made a few hundred yards of this light 
warping, when the floes, never at rest, open into a tort- 
uous canal again. We can dispense with the slow 
traction of the capstan. The same whale-line is 
passed out ahead, and a party of human horses take 
us in tow. Each man — or horse, if you please — has 
a canvas strap passing over his shoulder and fastened 
to the tow-line ; or, nautically, as this is a chapter ex- 
planatory of terms, " toggled to the warp." This har- 
nessing is no slight comfort to hands wet with water 
at the freezing point ; and with its aid they tug along, 
sometimes at a weary walk, and sometimes at a dog- 
trot. This is " tracking." 

When we could neither "heave," nor "warp," nor 
" track," nor sail, we resorted to all sorts of useless ex- 
pedients, such as sawing, cutting, and vainly striving 
to force our way into a more hopeful neighborhood. 
It was long before experience taught us to spare our- 
selves this useless labor. 

We had been three weeks completely imprisoned, 
and the season for useful search was rapidly flitting 
by, when, on the 27th of July, came the dawning 
promise of escape. 

A steady breeze had been blowing for several days 
from the northward and westward, and under its in- 
fluence the ice had so relaxed, that, had not the wind 
been dead ahead, we should have attemped sails. 
Our floe surface, disturbed by these new influences 
gave us a constantly-shifting topography. It was cu- 
rious to see the rapidity of the transformations. At 



BORING. 387 

one moment we were closed in by ice three feet thick, 
with a worn-down berg fifty feet deep on our beam ; 
our bows buried in hummocky masses, and our stern- 
post clogged with frozen sludge : in ten minutes open 
lanes were radiating from us in every direction, cracks 
becoming rivers, and puddles lakes : warping ahead 
for five minutes, every thing around us was ice again. 

But changes were going on. The sky had become 
lowering, the gulls had left us, and the barometer had 
fallen eight tenths since the day before. 

Late on the afternoon of the 28th, after another long 
day of unprofitable warping, the wind shifted to the 
eastward. The floes opened still wider, something 
like water was visible to the north and east, and at 9h. 
30m. P.M. we " cast off*," set our main-sail, and, with 
feelings of joyous relief, began to bore the ice. This 
wind soon freshened to a southeaster, and we dashed 
along to the northeast in a sea studded with icebergs. 
Broken floes running out into " streams" were on all 
sides of us ; but, only too glad to be once more free, we 
bored through them for the inshore circuit of Melville 
Bay. 

After a little while the horizon thickened ; and al- 
though our wind, surrounded as we were by ice, could 
hardly be called a gale, heavy undulations began to 
set in, making an uncomfortable sea, rendered danger- 
ous indeed by the swashing ice and a growing fog. 

The ice, too, after a little while, was no longer the 
rotten, half-thawed material of the middle pack, but 
heavy floes eight or ten feet of solid thickness, which 
seemed to stand out from the shore. 

Presently we found ourselves, urged by wind and 
sea, on a lee ridge of undulating fragments. There 
was no help for it : with grinding crash we entered its 



388 MELVILLE BAY. 

tumultuous margin. Before we had bored into it more 
than ten yards, we were on the edge of a nearly sub- 
merged iceberg, which, not being large enough to re- 
sist the swell, rolled fearfully. The sea dashed in an 
angry surf over its inclined sides, rattling the icy frag- 
ments or "brash" against its irregular surface. Our 
position reminded me of the scenes so well described 
by Beechy in the voyage of the Dorothea and Trent. 
For a time we were awkwardly placed, but we bored 
through ; and the Rescue, after skirting the same ob- 
struction, managed also to get through without damage. 

We continued to run along with our top-sail yard 
on the cap, but the growing fog made it impossible to 
keep on our course very long. After several encoun- 
ters with the floating hummocks, we succeeded in ty- 
ing fast to a heavy floe, which seemed to be connected 
with the land, and were thus moored within that mys- 
terious circuit known as Melville Bay. 

It is during the transit of this bay that most of 
the catastrophes occur which have made the statistics 
of the whalers so fearful. It was here, about twenty 
miles to the south of us, that in one year more than 
one thousand human beings were cast shelterless upon 
the ice, their ships ground up before their eyes. It is 
rarely that a season goes by in which the passage is 
attempted without disaster. 

The inshore side of the indentation is lined by a 
sweep of glacier, through which here and there the 
dark headlands of the coast force themselves with se- 
vere contrast. Outside of this, the shore, if we can 
call it such, is again lined with a heavy ledge of 
ground ice, thicker and more permanent than that in 
motion. This extends out for miles, forming an icy 
margin or beach, known technically as the " land ice," 



BERGS. 389 

or " the fast." Against this margin, the great " drift" 
through which we had been passing exerts a remitting 
action, receding sometimes under the influence of wind 
and currents so as to open a tortuous and uncertain 
canal along its edge, at others closing against it in a 
barrier of contending floes and bergs. 

Our initiation into the mysteries of this region was 
ominous enough. It blew a gale. The ofiing was a 
scene of noisy contention, obscured by a dense fog, 
through which rose the tops of the icebergs as they 
drifted by us. Twice in the night we were called up 
to escape these bergs by warping out of their path. 
Imagine a mass as large as the Parthenon bearing 
down upon you before a storm- wind ! 

The immediate site of our anchorage was about 
eighteen miles from the Black Hills, which rose above 
the glacier. It was truly an iron-bound coast, bergs, 
floes, and hummock ridges, in all the disarray of win- 
tery conflict, gemented in a basis of ice ten feet thick, 
and lashed by an angry sea. It was the first time I 
had witnessed the stupendous results of ice action. I 
went out with Captain De Haven to observe them 
more closely.- The hummocks had piled themselves 
at the edges of the floes in a set of rugged walls, some- 
times twenty feet high ; and here and there were ice- 
bergs firmly incorporated in the vast plain. Our at- 
tention was of course directed more anxiously to those 
which were drifting at large upon the open water ; but 
we could not help being impressed by the solid majes- 
ty of these stationary mountains. The height of one 
of them, measured by the sextant, was two hundred 
and forty feet. 

It was the motion of the floating bergs that sur- 
rounded us at this time, which first gave me the idea 



390 A RACE. 

of a great under-current to the northward. Their drift 
followed some system of advance entirely independent 
of the wind, and not apparently at variance with the 
received views of a great southern current. On the 
night of the 30th, while the surface ice or floe was 
drifting to the southward with the wind, the bergs 
were making a northern progress, crushing through 
the floes in the very eye of the breeze at a measured 
rate of a mile and a half an hour. The disproportion 
that uniformly subsists between the submerged and 
upper masses of a floating berg makes it a good index 
of the deep sea current, especially when its movement 
is against the wind. I noticed very many ice-mount- 
ains traveling to the north in opposition to both wind 
and surface ice. One of them we recognized five days 
afterward, nearly a hundred miles on its northern 
journey. 

In the so-called night, " all hands'' were turned to, 
and the old system of warping was renewed. The 
unyielding ice made it a slow process, but enough 
was gained to give us an entrance to some clear wa- 
ter about a mile in apparent length. While we were 
warping, one of these current-driven bergs kept us 
constant company, and at one time it was a regular 
race between us, for the narrow passage we were 
striving to reach would have been completely barri- 
caded if our icy opponent had got ahead. 

This exciting race, against wind and drift, and with 
the Rescue in tow, was at its height when we reached 
a point where, by warping around our opponent, we 
might be able to make sail. Three active men were 
instantly dispatched to prepare the warps. One took 
charge of the hawser, and another of the iron crow or 
chisel which is used to cut the hole ; the third, a 



OUR PROSPECTS. 391 

brawny seaman, named Costa, was in the act of lift- 
ing the anchor and driving it by main force into the 
solid ice, when, with a roar like near thunder, a crack 
ran across the berg, and almost instantly a segment 
about twice the size of our ship was severed from the 
rest. One man remained oscillating on the principal 
mass, a second escaped by jumping to the back ropes 
and chain shrouds of the bowsprit ; but poor Costa ! 
anchor and all, disappeared in the chasm ! By a mer- 
ciful Godsend, the sunken fragment had broken off 
so cleanly that, when it rose, it scraped against the 
fractured surface, and brought up its living freight 
along with it. Scared half to death, he was caught 
by the captain as he passed the jib-boom, and brought 
safe on board. This incident, coming thus early in 
our cruise, was a useful warning. 

^'August 2. 'Warping!' Tired of the very word! 
About 2 P.M. a lead, less obstructed than its fellows, 
enabled us to crowd on the canvas, and sail with gen- 
tle airs for about two miles to the eastward, and then, 
losing what little wind we had, we tied up again to 
our friend the land ice ; the little Rescue, as usual, a 
few yards astern. 

"We have learned to love the sunshine, though we 
have lost the night that gives it value to others. It 
comes back to us this evening, after the gale, with a 
circuit of sparkling and imaginative beauty, like the 
spangled petticoat of a ballet-dancer in full twirl to a 
boy on his first visit to the opera. I borrow the com- 
parison from one of my mess-mates ; but, in truth, all 
this about sunshine and warmth is only compara- 
tive at the best, for, though writing on deck, ' out of 
doors,' as they say at home, the thermometers give us 
but 43°." 



392 



3ielville's monument 



The bergs were an interesting subject of study. I 
counted one morning no less than, two hundred and 
ten of them from our decks, forming a beaded line from 
theN.N.W.totheS.S.E. 

'^August 10. Another day of sunshine. Were we 
in the Mediterranean, there could not be a warmer 
sky. It ends with the sky though ; for our thermom- 
eters fell at four A.M. to 24°. A careful set of observa- 
tions with Green's standard thermometers gave 18° 
as the difference between the sunshine and shade at 
noonday. The young ice was nearly an inch thick. 
Myriads of Auks were seen, and the usual supply duly 
slaughtered. 

** Melville's Monument appeared to-day under a new 
phase, rising out from the surrounding floe ice, either 
a salient peninsula or an isolated rock. 

" The land ice measured but five feet seven inches, 
the reduced growth, probably, of a single season. The 
open leads multiply, for we made under sail about 
fifteen miles N.N.W." 

As the next day glided in, the skies became over- 
cast, and the wind rose. Mist gathered about the 
horizon, shutting out the icebergs. The floes, which 
had opened before with a slender wind from the north- 
ward, now shed off dusty wreaths of snow, and began 
to close rapidly. 

Moving along in our little river passage, we ob- 
served it growing almost too narrow for navigation, 
and every now and then, where a projecting cape 
stretched out toward this advancing ice, we had to 
run the gauntlet between the opposing margins. 

It is under these circumstances, with a gale prob- 
ably outside, and a fog gathering around, that the 
whalers, less strengthened than ourselves, and taught 



HUMMOCKING. 393 

by a fearful experience, seek protecting bights among 
the floes or cut harbors in the ice. For us, the word 
delay did not enter into our commander's thoughts. 
We had not purchased caution by disaster ; and it 
was essential to success that we should make the 
most of this Godsend, a "slant" from the southeast. 

We pushed on ; but the Rescue, less fortunate than 
ourselves, could not follow. She was jammed in be- 
tween two closing surfaces. We were looking out 
for a temporary niche in which to secure ourselves, 
when we were challenged to the bear hunt I have 
spoken of a few pages back. 

Upon regaining the deck with Mr. Lovell's prize, we 
were struck with the indications of a brooding wind 
outside. The ice was closing in every direction ; and 
our master, Mr. Murdaugh, had no alternative but to 
tie up and await events. The Rescue did the same, 
some three hundred yards to the southward. 

By five A.M., a projecting edge of the outside floe 
came into contact with our own, at a point midway 
between the two vessels. This assailing floe was three 
feet eight inches thick, perhaps a mile in diameter, 
and moving at a rate of a knot an hour. Its weight 
was some two or three millions of tons. So irresistible 
was its momentum, that, as it impinged against the 
solid margin of the land ice, there was no recoil, no in- 
terruption to its progress. The elastic material cor- 
rugated before the enormous pressure ; then cracked, 
then crumbled, and at last rose, the lesser over the 
greater, sliding up in great inclined planes : and these, 
again, breaking by their weight and their continued 
impulse, toppled over in long lines of fragmentary ice. 

This imposing process of dynamics is called 
" Hummocking." Its most striking feature was its 



394 A PINCH. 

unswerving, unchecked continuousness. The mere 
commotion was hardly proportioned either to the in- 
tensity of the force or the tremendous effects which it 
produced. Tables of white marble were thrust into 
the air, as if by invisible machinery. 

First, an inclined face would rise, say ten feet ; then 
you would hear a grinding, tooth-pulling crunch : it 
has cracked at its base, and a second is sliding up 
upon it. Over this, again, comes a third ; and here- 
upon the first breaks down, carrying with it the sec- 
ond ; and just as you are expecting to see the whole 
pile disappear, up comes a fourth, larger than any of 
the rest, and converts all its predecessors into a cha- 
otic mass of crushed marble. Now the fragments thus 
comminuted are about the size of an old-fashioned 
Conestoga wagon, and the line thus eating its way is 
several hundred yards long. 

The action soon began to near our brig, which now, 
fast by a heavy cable, stood bows on awaiting the 
onset. It was an uncomfortable time for us, as we 
momentarily expected it to "nip" her sides, or bear 
her down with the pressure. But, thanks to the in- 
verted wedge action of her bows, she shot out like a 
squeezed water-melon seed, snapping her hawser like 
pack-thread, and backing into wider quarters. The 
Rescue was borne almost to her beam ends, but event- 
ually rose upon the ice. 

We cast ofi* again about 7 A.M. ; and after a weari- 
some day of warping, tracking, towing, and sailing, 
advanced some six or eight miles, along a coast-line 
of hills to the northeast, edged with glaciers. 

The currents were such as to entirely destroy our 
steerage way. Our rudder was for a time useless ; 
and the surface water was covered by ripple marks 




THE devil's thumb. 




MKLVIJ-Li: BAY. 



ANIMAL LIFE. 395 

which flowed in strangely looping curves. On the 
13th the sea abounded with life. Cetochili, as well 
as other entomostracan forms which I had not seen be- 
fore, lined, and, in fact, tinted the margins of the floe 
ice ; and for the first time I noticed among them some 
of those higher orders of crustacean life, which had 
heretofore been only found adhering to our warping 
lines. Among these were asellus and idotea, and that 
jerking little amphipod, the gammarus. Acalephse 
and limacinse abounded in the quiet leads. The birds, 
too, were back with us, the mollemoke, the Ivory gull, 
the Burgomaster, and the tern. 

The shore, which we had been so long skirting, 
again rose into mountains ; on whose southern flanks, 
as they receded, we could still see the great glacier. 
We had traced it all the way from the Devil's Thumb 
in a nearly continuous circuit; now we were about 
to lose it. The icebergs had sensibly diminished al- 
ready. 

"6 P.M Eefraction again! There is a black globe 
floating in the air, about 3° north of the sun. What 
it is you can not tell. Is it a bird or a balloon ? Pres- 
ently comes a sort of shimmering about its circumfer- 
ence, and on a sudden it changes its shape. Now 
you see plainly what it is. It is a grand piano, and 
nothing else. Too quick this time ! You had hardly 
named it, before it was an anvil — an anvil large enough 
for Mulciber and his Cyclops to beat out the loadstone 
of the poles. You have not got it quite adjusted to 
your satisfaction, before your anvil itself is changing ; 
it contracts itself centrewise, and rounds itself end- 
wise, and, presto, it has made itself duplicate — a pair 
of colossal dumb-bells. A moment! and it is the 
black globe again." 



396 • REFRACTION. 

About an hour after this necromantic juggle, the 
whole horizon became distorted: great bergs lifted 
themselves above it, and a pearly sky and pearly 
water blended with each other in such a way, that 
you could not determine where the one began or the 
other ended. Your ship was in the concave of a vast 
sphere ; ice shapes of indescribable variety around you, 
floating, like yourself, on nothingness ; the flight of a 
bird as apparent in the deeps of the sea as in the 
continuous element above. Nothing could be more 
curiously beautiful than our consort the Rescue, as 
she lay in mid-space, duplicated by her secondary im- 
age. 

This unequally refractive condition continued on 
into the next day ; diminishing as the sun approached 
his meridian altitude, but again coming back in the 
afternoon with augmented intensity. The appearance 
at night was more wonderful than it had been on the 
12th. I am desirous to give the impressions it made 
on me at the moment, and I therefore copy again 
from my journal, without erasing or modifying a sin- 
gle line. 

^^ August 13. To-night, at ten o'clock, we were op- 
posite a striking cliff, supposed to be Cape Melville, 
when, attracted by the irregular radiation from the 
sun, then about two hours from the lowest point of 
his curve, I saw suddenly flaring up all around him 
the signs of active combustion. Great volumes of 
black smoke rose above the horizon, narrowing and 
expanding as it rolled away. Black specks, to which 
the eye, by its compensation for distance, gave the size 
of masses, mingled with it, rising and falling, appear- 
ing and disappearing; and above all this was the pe- 
culiar waving movement of air, rarefied by an adjacent 



REFRACTION. 397 

heat. The whole intervening atmosphere was dis- 
turbed and flickering. 

'^August 15. The Rescue, which has proved herself 
a dull sailer, had lagged astern of us, when our master, 
Mr. Murdauglf, observed the signal of *men ashore' 
flying from her peak. We were now as far north as 
latitude 75° 58', and the idea of human life somehow 
or other involuntarily connected itself with disaster. 
A boat was hastily stocked with provisions and dis- 
patched for the shore. Two men were there upon 
the land ice, gesticulating in grotesque and not very 
decent pantomime — genuine, unmitigated Esquimaux. 
Verging on 76° is a far northern limit for human life; 
yet these poor animals were as fat as the bears which 
we killed a few days ago. Their hair, mane-like, 
flowed over their oily cheeks, and their countenances 
had the true prognathous character seen so rarely 
among the adulterated breeds of the Danish settle- 
ments. They were jolly, laughing fellows, full of so- 
cial feeling. Their dress consisted of a bear-skin pair 
of breeches, considerably the worse for wear ; a seal- 
skin jacket, hooded, but not pointed at its skirt ; and 
a pair of coarsely-stitched seal-hide boots. They were 
armed with a lance, harpoon, and air-bladder, for spear- 
ing seals upon the land floe. The kaiack, with its 
host of resources, they seemed unacquainted with. 

"When questioned by Mr. Murdaugh, to whom I 
owe these details, they indicated five huts, or fam- 
ilies, or individuals, toward a sort of valley between 
two hills. They were ignorant of the use of bread, 
and rejected salt beef; but they appeared familiar 
with ships, and would have gladly invited themselves 
to visit us, if the ofiicer had not inhospitably declined 
the honor." 



398 FROZEN FAMILIES. 

It was not very far from Cape York that we met 
these men. They belonged, probably, to the same de- 
tached parties of seal and fish catching coast nomads, 
that were met by Sir John Ross in his voyage of 1819, 
and whom he designated, fancifully enough, as the 
" Arctic Highlanders." 

Eleven years after his visit, some boat-crews, from 
a whaler which had escaped the ice disasters of 1830, 
landed at nearly the same spot, and made for a group 
of huts. They were struck as they approached them 
to find no beaten snow-tracks about the entrance, nor 
any of the more unsavory indications of an Esquimaux 
homestead. The riddle was read when they lifted up 
the skin curtain, that served to cover at once doorway 
and window. Grouped around an oilless lamp, in the 
attitudes of life, were four or five human corpses, with 
darkened lip and sunken eyeball ; but all else preserved 
in perennial ice. The frozen dog lay beside his frozen 
master, and the child, stark and stiff, in the reindeer 
hood which enveloped the frozen mother. The cause 
was a mystery, for the hunting apparatus was near 
them, and the bay abounds with seals, the habitual food, 
and light, and fire of the Esquimaux. Perhaps the ex- 
cessive cold had shut off their supplies for a time by 
closing the ice-holes — perhaps an epidemic had strick- 
en them. Some three or four huts that were near had 
the same melancholy furniture of extinct life. 




K8QUIMAUX ON SNOW-SHOES. 



CHAPTER XXXL 
THE FmST AMERICAN EXPEDITION. 

(CONTIOTJED.) 

We sailed along the coast quietly, but with the com- 
fortable excitement of expectation. We had not yet 
seen such open water, and were momentarily expect- 
ing the change, of course, which was to lead us through 
the North Water to Lancaster Sound. The glaciers 
were no longer near the water-line ; but an escarped 
shore, of the usual primary structure, gave us a pleas- 
ing substitute. 

In a short time we reached the " Crimson Cliffs of 
Beverley," the seat of the often-described "red snow." 
The coast was high and rugged, the sea-line broken 
by precipitous sections and choked by detritus. Sail- 
ing slowly along, at a distance of about ten miles, we 
could distinctly see outcropping faces of red feldspathic 
rock, while in depending positions, between the cones 
of detritus, the scanty patches of snow were tinged 
with a brick-dust or brown stain. As yet indeed we 
could not see the " Crimson" of Sir John Ross, who 
gave to this spot its somewhat euphonious title ; but 
the locality was not without indications which should 
excuse this gallant navigator from imputations against 
his veracity of narrative. 

But it fell calm, and I had an opportunity of visit- 
ing the shore. The place where we landed was in 



400 THE OEIMSON CLIFFS. 

latitude 76° 04' N., nearly. It was a little cove, bor- 
dered on one side by a glacier ; on the other, watered 
by distillations from it, and green with luxuriant 
mosses. It was, indeed, a fairy little spot, brightened, 
perhaps, by its contrast with the icy element, on which 
I had been floating for a month and a half before ; yet 
even now, as it comes back to me in beautiful com- 
panionship with many sweet places of the earth, I am 
sure that its charms were real. 

The glacier came down by a twisted circuit from a 
deep valley, which it nearly filled. As it approached 
the sea, it seemed unable to spread itself over the horse- 
shoe-like expansion in which we stood ; but, retaining 
still the impress marks of its own little valley birth- 
place, it rose up in a huge dome-like escarpment, one 
side frozen to the cliffs, the other a wall beside us, and 
the end a rounded mass protruding into the sea. 

Close by the foot of its precipitous face, in a fur- 
rowed water-course, was a mountain torrent, which, 
emerging from the point at which the glacier met the 
hill, came dashing wildly over the rocks, green with 
the mosses and carices of Arctic vegetation ; while 
from the dome-like summit a stream, that had tun- 
neled its way through the ice from the valley still 
higher above, burst out like a fountain, and fell in a 
cascade of foam- whitened water into the sea. 

To return to the " Crimson Cliffs." We found the 
red snow in greatest abundance upon a talus fronting 
to the southwest, which stretched obliquely across the 
glacier at the seat of its emergence from the valley. 
It was here in great abundance, staining the surface 
in patches six or eight yards in diameter. Similar 
patches were to be seen at short intervals extending 
up the valley. 



Bessie's cove. 401 

Its color was a deep but not bright red. It resem- 
bled, with its accompanying impurities, crushed pre- 
served cranberries, with the seed and capsule strewn 
over the snow. It imparted to paper drawn over it a 
nearly cherry-red, or perhaps crimson stain, which be- 
came brown with exposure ; and a handful thawed 
in a glass tumbler resembled muddy claret. 

Its coloring matter was evidently soluble ; for, on 
scraping away the surface, we found that it had dyed 
the snow beneath with a pure and beautiful rose color, 
which penetrated, with a gradually softening tint, 
some eight inches below the surface. 

At 4 P.M. we left this interesting spot, for which 
some pleasant associations had suggested to me the 
name of '^ Bessie's Cove," and commenced beating to 
the northward. The sea was crowded with entomos- 
traca and clios, on which myriads of Auks were feed- 
ing. The prospects of open water were most cheering. 
One mile from the shore, we got soundings in rocky 
bottom, at twenty-three fathoms, and then, wishing to 
" fill up " with water before attempting our passage to 
the west, we stood close in, seeking a favorable spot. 

About eleven o'clock we were attracted by a bight 
midway between Capes York and Dudley Diggs. Its 
foreground was of rugged syenitic rocks, and over these 
we could distinctly see the water rushing down in a 
foaming torrent. Here was a watering-place. 

By means of our old friends the warps, we hauled in 
so close that the sides of our vessels touched the rocks. 
A few inches only intervened between our keel and 
the shining pebbles. We could jump on shore as from 
a wharf. The sun was so low at this midnight hour 
as to bathe every thing in an atmosphere of Italian 
pink, deliciously imlike the Arctic regions. The recess 



402 AN ARCTIC GARDEiq- 

was in blackest shadow, but the cliffs which formed 
the walls of the cove rose up into full sunshine. The 
Auks crowded these rocks in mynads. So, with gun 
and sextant, I started on a tramp. 

The cove itself measured but six hundred yards from 
bluff to bluff. It was recessed in a regular ellipse, or 
rather horseshoe, around which the strongly-featured 
gneisses, relieved, as usual, with the outcroppings of 
feldspar, formed lofty mural precipices. I estimated 
their mean elevation at twelve hundred feet. At their 
bases a mass of schistose rubbish had accumulated. 

I have described this recess as a perfect horseshoe : 
it was not exactly such, for at its northeast end a rug- 
ged little water-feeder, formed by the melting snows, 
sent down a stream of foam which buried itself under 
the frozen surface of a lake. Yet to the eye it was a 
nearly absolute theatre, this little cove, and its arena 
a moss-covered succession of terraces, each of indescrib- 
able richness. 

Strange as it seemed, on the immediate level of snow 
and ice, the constant infiltrations, aided by solar rever- 
beration, had made an Arctic garden-spot. The sur- 
face of the moss, owing, probably, to the extreme altern- 
ations of heat and cold, was divided into regular hex- 
agons and other polyhedral figures, and scattered over 
these, nestling between the tufts, and forming little 
groups on their southern faces, was a quiet, unobtru- 
sive community of Alpine flowering plants. The weak- 
)iess of individual growth allowed no ambitious species 
to overpower its neighbor, so that many families were 
crowded together in a rich flower-bed. In a little space 
that I could cover with my pea-jacket, the veined leaves 
of the Pyrola were peeping out among chickweeds and 
saxifrages, the sorrel and Ranunculus. I even found a 







■'^'- 




LOOKIMG E0& WATER. 




BESSIE'S COVE, 



FLORULA. 405 

poor gentian, stunted and reduced, but still, like every 
thing around it, in all the perfection of miniature pro- 
portions. 

As this mossy parterre approached the rocky walls 
that hemmed it in, tussocks of sedges and coarse grass 
began to show themselves, mixed with heaths and 
birches ; and still further on, at the margin of the horse- 
shoe, and fringing its union with the stupendous piles 
of debris, came an annulus of Arctic shrubs and trees. 

Shrubs and trees ! the words recall a smile, for they 
only typed those natives of another zone. The poor 
things had lost their uprightness, and learned to escape 
the elements by trailing along the rocks. Few rose 
above my shoes, and none above my ankles ; yet shady 
alleys and heaven-pointing avenues could not be more 
impressive examples of creative adaptation. Here I 
saw the bleaberry [Vaccinium uliginosum) in flower 
and in fruit — I could cover it with a wine-glass ; the 
wild honeysuckle [Azalea procuinhens) of our Penn- 
sylvania woods — I could stick the entire plant in my 
button-hole ; the Andromeda tetragona, like a green 
marabou feather. 

Strangest among these transformations came the 
willows. One, the Salix herhacea, hardly larger than 
a trefoil clover ; another, the >S'. glauca, like a young 
althea, just bursting from its seed. A third, the S. 
lanata, a triton among these boreal mJnnows, looked 
like an unfortunate garter-snake, bound here and there 
by claw-like radicles, which, unable to penetrate the 
inhospitable soil, had spread themselves out upon the 
surface — traps for the broken lichens and fostering 
moss which formed its scanty mould. 

I had several opportunities, while taking sextant el- 
evations of the headlands, to measure the moss-beds 



40G MOSS-BEDS. 

of this cove, both by sections where streams from the 
lake had left denuded faces, and by piercing through 
them with a pointed staff. These mosses formed an 
investing mould, built up layer upon layer, until it had 
attained a mean depth of five feet. At one place, near 
the sea line, it was seven feet ; and even here the slow 
processes of Arctic decomposition had not entirely de- 
stroyed the delicate radicles and stems. The fronds 
of the pioneering lichens were still recognizable, en- 
tangled among the rest. 

Yet these little layers represented, in their diminu- 
tive stratification, the deposits of vegetable periods. I 
counted sixty-eight in the greatest section.^ Those 
chemical processes by which nature converts our au- 
tumnal leaves into pabulum for future growths work 
slowly here. 

My companions were already firing away at the 
Auks, which covered in great numbers the debris of 
fallen rock. This was deposited at an excessive in- 
clination, sometimes as great as 47° ; its talus, some 
three hundred feet in height, cutting in cone-like proc- 
esses against the mural faces of the cliff. 

There was something about this great inclined plane, 
with its enormous fragments, their wild distribution, 
and steep angle of deposit, almost fearfully character- 
istic of the destructive agencies of Arctic congelation. 
I had never seen, not even at the bases of the mural 
traps of India and South Amerixia — or better, perhaps^ 
than either, our own Connecticut — such evidences of 
active degradation. It is not to the geologist alone 

* I copy the number of these layers as I find it marked in my journal ; yet 
I do so, not without some fear that I may be misled by the chirography of a 
very hurried note. My recollections are of a very large number, yet not so 
large as that which my respect for the littera scripta induces me to retain iu 
the text. 



auks' nests. 407 

that these talus and debris are impressive. They tell 
of changes which have begun and been going on since 
the existence of the earth in its present state by the 
friction of time against its surface ; and they carry us 
on with solemn force to the period when the dehiscent 
edges and mountain ravines of this same earth shall 
have been worn down into rounded hill and gentle val- 
ley. Well may they be called " geological chronome- 
ters."^ They point with impressive finger to the ro- 
tation of years. The dial-plate and the index are both 
there, and human wdsdom almost deciphers the nota- 
tion ! 

On the steeper flanks of these rocky cones the little 
Auks had built their nests. The season of incubation, 
though far advanced, had not gone by, for the young 
fledglings were looking down upon me in thousands ; 
and the mothers, with crops full of provender, were 
constantly arriving from the sea. Urged by a wish to 
study the domestic habits of these little Arctic emi- 
grants at their homestead, I foolishly clambered up to 
one of their most popular colonies, without thinking 
of my descent. 

The angle of deposit was already very great, not 
much less than 50°; and as I moved on, with a walk- 
ing-pole substituted for my gun, I was not surprised to 
find the fragments receding under my feet, and rolling, 
with a resounding crash, to the plain below. Stop- 
ping, however, to regain my breath, I found that above, 
beneath, around me, every thing was in motion. The 
entire surface seemed to be sliding down. Ridiculous 
as it may seem to dwell upon a matter apparently so 
trivial, my position became one of danger. The accel- 
erated velocity of the masses caused them to leap off 

* Mantell's "Wonders of Geology." 



408 TRAPPING THE AUKS. 

in deflected lines. Several uncomfortable fragments 
had already passed by me, some even over my head, 
and my walking-pole was jerked from my hands and 
buried in the ruins. Thus helpless, I commenced my 
own half-involuntary descent, expecting momentarily 
to follow my pole, when my eye caught a projecting 
outcrop of feldspar, against which the strong current 
split into two minor streams. This, with some hard 
jumps, I succeeded in reaching. 

As I sat upon the temporary security of this little 
rock, surrounded by falling fragments, and awaiting 
their slow adjustment to a new equilibrium before 1 
ventured to descend, I was struck with the Arctic orig- 
inality of every thing around. It was midnight, and 
the sun, now to the north, was hidden by the rocks ; 
but the whole atmosphere was pink with light. Over 
head and around me whirled innumerable crowds of 
Auks and Ivory gulls, screeching with execrable clam- 
or, almost in contact with my person. 

The calm which had given us these two days of 
shore rambles left us suddenly on the 18th. We stood 
towards Wolstenholme Sound, and bore across to the 
west in more open water than we had seen for several 
weeks. It was now beyond doubt that we were to 
winter somewhere among the scenes of Arctic trial. 
We were past the barrier, heading direct for Lancas- 
ter Sound, with the motion of waves once more under 
us, and a breeze aloft. As I refer to my journal, I see 
how the tone of feeling rose among our little party. 
We began again with something of confidence to con- 
nect the probable results with the objects of the ex- 
pedition. We had lost three weeks off the Devil's 
Tongue, the British steamers were flir ahead of us in 
point of time, and their superior ability and practice 



GOOD-BY TO BAFFIN. 409 

would still keep them in the advance ; and we were 
ignorant of their course and intended scheme of search. 
We had dreamed hefore this, and pleasantly enough, 
of fellowship with them in our efforts, dividing be- 
tween us the hazards of the way, and perhaps in the 
long winter holding with them the cheery intercourse 
of kindred sympathies. We waked now to the prob- 
abilities of passing the dark days alone. Yet fairly on 
the way, an energetic commander, a united ship's com- 
pany, the wind freshening, our well-tried little ice- 
boat now groping her way like a blind man through 
fog and bergs, and now dashing on as if reckless of all 
but success— it was impossible to repress a sentiment 
almost akin to the so-called joyous excitement of con- 
flict. 

We were bidding good-by to ^^ye goode baye of old 
William Baffin ;" and as we looked round with a fare- 
well remembrance upon the still water, the diminished 
icebergs, and the constant sun which had served us so 
long and faithfully, we felt that the bay had used us 
kindly. 

Though I had read a good deal in the voyagers' 
books about Baffin's Bay, I had strangely and entirely 
misconceived the prominent features of its summer 
scenery. There is a combination of warmth and cold 
in the tone of its landscapes, a daring, eccentric vari- 
ety of forms, an intense clearness, almost energy of ex- 
pression, which might tax Turner and Stanfield to- 
gether to reproduce them with an approach to truth. 
How could they trace the features of the iceberg, melt- 
ing into shapes so boldly marked, yet so undefined ; or 
body forth its cold varieties of unshaded white, or the 
azure clare-obscure of the ice-chasm ! There are the 
black hills, blots upon rolling snow; the ice-plain, mar- 



410 CONTINUOUS DAYLIGHT. 

gined with glaciers, and jutting out in capes from the 
clifFed shore : there is the still blue water. Or, if you 
want action instead of repose, here is the crashing floe, 
the grinding hummock, and the monumental berg ris- 
ing above both ! itself, though perishable, a seeming 
permanency compared with the ephemeral ruins that 
bsat against its sides. 

All this is attempered by the warm glazing of a tint- 
ed atmosphere. The sky of Baffin's Bay, though but 
eight hundred miles from the Polar limit of all north- 
ernness, is as warm as the Bay of Naples after a June 
rain. What artist, then, could give this mysterious 
union of warm atmosphere and cold landscape ? 

The perpetual daylight had continued up to this 
moment with unabated glare. The sun had reached 
his north meridian altitude some days before, but the 
eye was hardly aware of change. Midnight had a 
softened character, like the low summer's sun at home, 
but there was no twilight. 

At first the novelty of this great unvarying day 
made it pleasing. It was curious to see the ^' mid- 
night Arctic sun set into sunrise," and pleasant to find 
that, whether you ate or slept, or idled or toiled, the 
same daylight was always there. No irksome night 
forced upon you its system of compulsory alternations. 
I could dine at midnight, sup at breakfast-time, and 
go to bed at noonday ; and but for an apparatus of 
coils and cogs, called a watch, would have been no 
wiser and no worse. 

My feeling was at first an extravagant sense of un- 
defined relief, of some vague restraint removed. I 
seemed to have thi'own oft' the slavery of hours. In 
fact, I could hardly realize its entirety. The astral 
lamps, standing, dust-covered, on our lockers — I am 



CONTINUOUS DAYLIGHT. 411 

(] noting the words of my journal— puzzled me, as 
things obsolete and fanciful. 

My lot had been cast in the zone of liriodendrons and 
sugar-maples, in the nearly midway latitude of 40°. 
I had been habituated to day and night ; and every 
portion of these two great divisions had for me its pe- 
riods of peculiar association. Even in the tropics, I 
had mourned the lost twilight. How much more did 
I miss the soothing darkness, of which twilight should 
have been the precursor ! I began to feel, with more 
of emotion than a man writing for others likes to con- 
fess to, how admirable, as a systematic law, is the al- 
ternation of day and night — words that type the two 
great conditions of living nature, action and repose. 
To those who with daily labor earn the daily bread, 
how kindly the season of sleep ! To the drone who, 
urged by the waning daylight, hastens the deferred 
task, how fortunate that his procrastination has not a 
six months' morrow ! To the brain- workers among 
men, the enthusiasts, who bear irksomely the dark 
screen which falls upon their day-dreams, how benig- 
nant the dear night blessing, which enforces reluctant 
rest ! 

^^ August 19. The wind continued freshening, the 
Aneroid falling two tenths in the night. About eight 
I was called by our master, with the news that a 
couple of vessels were following in our wake. "We 
were shortening sail for our consort ; and by half past 
twelve, the larger stranger, the Lady Franklin, came 
up along side of us. A cordial greeting, such as those 
only know who have been pelted for weeks in the sol- 
itudes of Arctic ice — and we learned that this was 
Captain Penny's squadron, bound on the same pursuit 
as ourselves, A hurried interchange of news followed. 



412 CAPTAIN penny's SQUADRON. 

The ice in Melville Bay had bothered both parties 
alike ; Commodore Austin, with his steamer tenders, 
was three days ago at Carey's Islands, a group near- 
ly as high as 77° north latitude ; the North Star, the 
missing provision transport of last summer, was safe 
somewhere in Lancaster Sound, probably at Leopold 
Island. For the rest, God speed ! 

" As she slowly forged ahead, there came over the 
rough sea that good old English hurra, which we in- 
herit on our side the water. ' Three cheers, hearty, 
with a will!' indicating as much of brotherhood as 
sympathy. ' Stand aloft, boys !' and we gave back the 
greeting. One cheer more of acknowledgment on each 
side, and the sister flags separated, each on its errand 
of mercy. 

" The sea is short and excessive. Every thing on 
deck, even anchors and quarter-boats, have ' fetched 
away,' and the little cabin is half afloat. The Rescue 
is staggering under heavy sail astern of us. We are 
makinjr six or seven knots an hour. Murdaugh is 
ahead, looking out for ice and rocks ; De Haven con- 
ning the ship. 

'' All at once a high mountain shore rises before us, 
and a couple of isolated rocks show themselves, not 
more than a quarter of a mile ahead, white with break- 
ers. Both vessels are laid to." 

The storm reminded me of a Mexican " norther." 
It was not till the afternoon of the next day that we 
were able to resume our track, under a double-reefed 
top-sail, stay-sail, and spencer. We were, of course, 
without observation still, and could only reckon that 
we had passed the Cunningham Mountains and Capo 
Warrender. 

About three o'clock in the morning of the 21st, an- 



SIR JOHN ROSS. 413 

other sail was reported ahead, a top-sail schooner, tow- 
ing after her what appeared to he a launch, decked 
over. 

" When I reached the deck, we were nearly up to 
her, for we had shaken out our reefs, and were driving 
before the wind, shipping seas at every roll. The lit- 
tle schooner was under a single close-reefed top-sail, and 
seemed fluttering over the waves like a crippled bird. 
Presently an old fellow, with a cloak tossed over his 
night gear, appeared in the lee gangway, and saluted 
with a voice that rose above the winds. 

*' It was the Felix, commanded by that practical 
Arctic veteran, Sir John Ross. I shall never forget the 
heartiness with which the hailing officer sang out, in 
the midst of our dialogue, 'You and I are ahead of them 
all.' It was so indeed. Austin, with two vessels, was 
at Pond's Bay ; Penny was somewhere in the gale ; 
and others of Austin's squadron were exploring the 
north side of the Sound. The Felix and the Advance 
were on the lead. 

" Before we separated, Sir John Ross came on deck, 
and stood at the side of his officer. He was a square- 
built man, apparently very little stricken in years, and 
well able to bear his part in the toils and hazards of 
life. He has been wounded in four several engage- 
ments — twice desperately — and is scarred from head 
to foot. He has conducted two Polar expeditions al- 
ready, and performed in one of them the unparalleled 
feat of wintering four years in Arctic snows. And 
here he is again, in a flimsy cockle-shell, after contrib- 
uting his purse and his influence, embarked himself in 
the crusade of search for a lost comrade. "We met him 
oflf Admiralty Inlet, just about the spot at which he 
was picked up seventeen years before." 



414 THE PRINCE ALBERT. 

Soon after midnight, the land became visible on the 
north side of the Sound. We had passed Cape Charles 
Yorke and Cape Crawfurd, and were fanning along 
sluggishly with all the sail we could crowd for Port 
Leopold. 

It was the next day, however, before we came in 
sight of the island, and it was nearly spent when we 
found ourselves slowly approaching Whaler Point, the 
seat of the harbor. Our way had been remarkably 
clear of ice for some days, and we were vexed to find, 
therefore, that a firm and rugged barrier extended along 
the western shore of the inlet, and apparently across 
the entrance we were seeking. 

It was a great relief to us to see, at half past six in 
the evening, a top-sail schooner working toward us 
through the ice. She boarded us at ten, and proved 
to be Lady Franklin's own search-vessel, the Prince 
Albert. 

This was a very pleasant meeting. Captain For- 
syth, who commanded the Albert, and Mr. Snow, who 
acted as a sort of adjutant under him, were very agree- 
a.ble gentlemen. They spent some hours with us, 
which Mr. Snow has remembered kindly in the journal 
he has published since his return to England. Their 
little vessel was much less perfect!}^ fitted than ours to 
encounter the perils of the ice ; but in one respect at 
least their expedition resembled our own. They had 
to rough it : to use a Western phrase, they had no fan- 
cy fixings — nothing but what a hasty outfit and a lim- 
ited purse could supply. They were now bound for 
Cape Rennell, after which they proposed making a 
sledge excursion over the lower Booth ian and Cock- 
burne lands. 

The North Star, they told us, had been caught by 



CAPE RILEY. 415 

the ice last season in the neighhorhood of our own first 
imprisonment, off the Devil's Thumb. After a peril- 
ous drift, she had succeeded in entering Wolstenholme 
Sound, whence, after a tedious winter, she had only re- 
cently arrived at Port Bo wen. 

They followed in our wake the next day as we push- 
ed through many streams of ice across the strait. We 
sighted the shore about five miles to the west of Cape 
Hurd very closely ; a miserable wilderness, rising in 
terraces of broken-down limestone, arranged between 
the hills like a vast theatre. 

On the 25th, still beating through the ice off Rad- 
stock Bay, we discovered on Cape Riley two cairns, 
one of them, the most conspicuous, with a flag-staff and 
ball. A couple of hours after, we were near enough 
to land. The cape itself is a low projecting tongue of 
limestone, but at a short distance behind it the cliff 
rises to the height of some eight hundred feet. We 
found a tin canister within the larger cairn, contain- 
ing the information that Captain Ommanney had been 
there two days before us, with the Assistance and In- 
trepid, belonging to Captain Austin's squadron, and 
had discovered traces of an encampment, and other 
indications "that some party belonging to her Britan- 
nic majesty's service had been detained at this spot." 
Similar traces, it was added, had been found also on 
Beechy Island, a projection on the channel side some 
ten miles from Cape Riley. 

Our consort, the Rescue, as we afterward learned, 
had shared in this discovery, though the British com- 
mander's inscription in the cairn, as well as his offi- 
cial reports, might lead perhaps to a different conclu- 
sion. Captain Griffin, in fact, landed with Captain 
Ommanney, and the traces were registered while the 
two officers were in company. 



416 franklin's encampment. 

T inspected these different traces very carefully, and 
noted what I observed at the moment. The appear- 
ances which connect them Iv^ith the story of Sir John 
Franklin have been described by others ; but there 
may still be interest in a description of them made 
while they were under my eye. I transcribe it word 
for word from my journal. 

*' On a tongue of fossiliferous limestone, fronting to- 
ward the west on a little indentation of the water, and 
shielded from the north by the precipitous cliffs, are 
five distinct remnants of habitation. 

" Nearest the cliffs, four circular mounds or heap- 
ings-up of the crumbled limestone, aided by larger 
stones placed at the outer edge, as if to protect the 
leash of a tent. Two larger stones, with an interval 
of two feet, fronting the west, mark the places of en- 
trance. 

" Several large square stones, so arranged as to serve 
probably for a fire-place. These have been tumbled 
over by parties before us. 

" More distant from the cliffs, yet in line, with the 
four already described, is a larger inclosure ; the door 
facing south, and looking toward the strait : this so- 
called door is simply an entrance made of large stones 
placed one above the other. The inclosure itself tri- 
angular; its northern side about eighteen inches high, 
built up of fiat stones. Some bird bones and one rib 
of a seal were found exactly in the centre of this tri- 
angle, as if a party had sat round it eating; and the 
top of a preserved meat case, much rusted, was found 
in the same place. I picked up a piece of canvas or 
duck on the cliff side, well worn by the weather : the 
sailors recognized it at once as the gore of a pair of 
trowsers. 



franklin's encampment. 417 

" A fifth circle is discernible nearer the cliffs, which 
may have belonged to the same party. It was less 
perfect than the others, and seemed of an older date. 

" On the beach, some twenty or thirty yards from 
the triangular inclosure, were several pieces of pine 
wood about four inches long, painted green, and white, 
and black, and, in one instance, puttied ; evidently 
parts of a boat, and apparently collected as kindling 
wood." 

The indications were meagre, but the conclusion 
they led to was irresistible. They could not be the 
work of Esquimaux : the whole character of them con- 
tradicted it : and the only European who could have 
visited Cape Riley was Parry, twenty-eight years be- 
fore ; and we knew from his journal that he had not 
encamped here. Then, again, Ommanney's discovery 
of like vestiges on Beechy Island, just on the track of 
a party moving in either direction between it and the 
channel : all these speak of a land party from Frank- 
lin's squadron. 

Our commander resolved to press onward along the 
eastern shore of Wellington Channel. We were un- 
der weigh in the early morning of the 26th, and work- 
ing along with our consort toward Beechy — I drop 
the " Island," for it is more strictly a peninsula or a 
promontory of limestone, as high and abrupt as that 
at Cape Biley, connected with what we call the main 
by a low isthmus. Still further on we passed Cape 
Spencer ; then a fine bluff point, called by Parry Point 
Innes ; and further on again, the trend being to the 
east of north, we saw the low tongue, Cape Bowden. 
Parry merely sighted these points from a distance, so 
that the shore line has never been traced. I sketch- 
ed it myself with some care ; but the running survey 



418 FRANKLIN S ENCAMPMENT. 

of this celebrated explorer had left nothing to alter. 
To the north of Cape Innes, though the coast retains 
the same geognostical character, the bluff promonto- 
ries subside into low hills, between which the beach, 
composed of coarse silicious limestone, sweeps in long 
curvilinear terraces. Measuring some of these rudely 
afterward, I found that the elevation of the highest 
plateau did not exceed forty feet. 

Our way northward was along an ice channel close 
under the eastern shore, and bounded on the other side 
by the ice-pack, at a distance varying from a quarter 
of a mile to a mile and three quarters. Off Cape Spen- 
cer the way seemed more open, widening perhaps to 
two miles, and showing something like continued free 
water to the north and west. Here we met Captain 
Penny, with the Lady Franklin and Sophia. He told 
us that the channel was completely shut in ahead by 
a compact ice barrier, which connected itself with that 
to the west, describing a horseshoe bend. He thought 
a southwester was coming on, and counseled us to pre- 
pare for the chances of an impactment. The go-ahead 
determination which characterized our commander 
made us test the correctness of his advice. We push- 
ed on, tracked the horseshoe circuit of the ice without 
finding an outlet, and were glad to labor back again 
almost in the teeth of a gale. 

Captain Penny had occupied the time more profita- 
bly. In company with Dr. Goodsir, an enthusiastic 
explorer and highly educated gentleman, whose broth- 
er was an assistant surgeon on board the missing ves- 
sels, he had been examining the shore. On the ridge 
of limestone, between Cape Spencer and Point Innes, 
they had come across additional proofs that Sir John's 
party had been here — very important these proofs as 



franklin's encampment. 419 

extending the line along the shore over which the par- 
ty must have moved from Cape Riley. 

Among the articles they had found were tin canis- 
ters, with the London maker's lahel ; scraps of news- 
paper, hearing the date 1844 ; a paper fragment, with 
the words " until called" on it, seemingly part of a 
watch order ; and two other fragments, each with the 
name of one of Franklin's officers written on it in pen- 
cil. 

On the 27th, the chances of this narrow and capri- 
cious navigation had gathered five of the searching 
vessels, under three different commands, within the 
same quarter of a mile — Sir John Ross', Penny's, and 
our own. Both Ross and Penny had made the effort 
to push through the sound to the west, hut found a 
great belt of ice, reaching in an almost regular cres- 
cent from Leopold's Island across to the northern shore, 
about half a mile from the entrance of the channel. 
Captain Ommanney, with the Intrepid and Assistance, 
had been less fortunate. He had attempted to break 
his way through the barrier, but it had closed on him, 
and he was now fast, within fifteen miles of us, to the 
west. 

After breakfast, our commander and myself took a 
boat to visit the traces discovered yesterday by Cap- 
tain Penny. Taking the Lady Franklin in our way, 
we met Sir John Ross and Commander Phillips, and 
a conference naturally took place upon the best plans 
for concerted operations. I was very much struck 
with the gallant disinterestedness of spirit which was 
shown by all the officers in this discussion. Penny, 
an energetic, practical fellow, sketched out at once a 
plan of action for each vessel of the party. He him- 
self would take the western search ; Ross should run 

25 



420 THE GRAVES. 

over to Prince Regent's Sound, communicate the news 
to the Prince Albert, and so relieve that little vessel 
from the now unnecessary perils of her intended expe- 
dition ; and we were to press through the first open- 
ings in the ice by Wellington Channel, to the north 
and east. 

It was wisely determined by brave old Sir John 
that he would leave the Mary, his tender of twelve 
tons, at a little inlet near the point, to serve as a fall- 
back in case we should lose our vessels or become 
sealed up in permanent ice, and De Haven and Penny 
engaged their respective shares of her outfit, in the 
shape of some barrels of beef and flour. Sir John 
Ross, I think, had just left us to go on board his little 
craft, and I was still talking over our projects with 
Captain Penny, when a messenger was reported, mak- 
ing all speed to us over the ice. 

The news he brought was thrilling. " Graves, Cap- 
tain Penny ! graves ! Franklin's winter quarters !" 
We were instantly in motion. Captain De Haven, 
Captain Penny, Commander Phillips, and myself, join- 
ed by a party from the Rescue, hurried on over the ice, 
and, scrambling along the loose and rugged slope that 
extends from Beechy to the shore, came, after a weary 
walk, to the crest of the isthmus. Here, amid the ster- 
ile uniformity of snow and slate, were the head-boards 
of three graves, made after the old orthodox fashion of 
gravestones at home. The mounds which adjoined 
them were arranged with some pretensions to symme- 
try, coped and defended with limestone slabs. They 
occupied a line facing toward Cape Riley, which was 
distinctly visible across a little cove at the dista nee of 
some four hundred yards. 

The first, or that most to the southward, is nearest to 



THE GRAVES. 421 

the front in the accompanying sketch. Its inscrip- 
tion, cut in by a chisel, ran thus : 

" Sacred 

to the 

memory 

of 

W. Braine, R. M., 

H. M. S. Erebus. 

Died April 3d, 1846, 

aged 32 years. 

' Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.' 

Joshua, ch. xxiv., 15." 

The second was : 

" Sacred to the memory of 

John Hartnell, A. B. of H. M. S. 

Erebus, 

aged 23 years. 

♦Thus saith the Lord, consider your ways.' 

Haggai, i., 7." 

The third and last of these memorials was not quite 
so well finished as the others. The mound was not 
of stone-work, but its general appearance was more 
grave-like, more like the sleeping-place of Christians 
in happier lands. It was inscribed : 

" Sacred 

to 

the memory 

of 

John Torrington, 

who departed this life 

January 1st, A.D. 1846, 

on board of 

H, M, ship Terror, 

aged 20 years." 

"Departed this life on board the Terror, 1st January, 
1846 !" Franklin's ships, then, had not been wrecked 
when he occupied the encampment at Beechy ! 

Two large stones were imbedded in the friable lime- 
stone a little to the left of these sad records, and near 
theni was a piece of wood, more than a foot in diam- 



422 MOUNDS. 

eter, and two feet eight inches high, which had evi- 
dently served for an anvil -block : the marks were un- 
mistakable. Near it again, but still more to the east, 
and therefore nearer the beach, was a large blackened 
space, covered with coal cinders, iron nails, spikes, 
hinges, rings, clearly the remains of the armorer's forge. 
Still nearer the beach, but more to the south, was the 
carpenter's shop, its marks equally distinctive. 

Leaving " the graves," and walking toward Wel- 
lington Straits, about four hundred yards, or perhaps 
less, we came to a mound, or rather a series of mounds, 
which, considering the Arctic character of the surface 
at this spot, must have been a work of labor. It in- 
closed one nearly elliptical area, and one other, which, 
though separated from the first by a lesser mound, 
appeared to be connected with it. The spaces thus 
inclosed abounded in fragmentary remains. Among 
them I saw a stocking without a foot, sewed up at its 
edge, and a mitten not so much the worse for use as 
to have been without value to its owner. Shavings 
of wood were strewed freely on the southern side of 
the mound, as if they had been collected there by the 
continued labor of artificers, and not far from these, a 
few hundred yards lower down, was the remnant of a 
garden. Weighing all the signs carefully, I had no 
doubt that this was some central shore establishment, 
connected with the squadron, and that the lesser area 
was used as an observatory, for it had large stones 
fixed as if to support instruments, and the scantling 
props still stuck in the frozen soil. 

Travelling on about a quarter of a mile further, and 
in the same direction, we came upon a deposit of more 
than six hundred preserved-meat cans, arranged in 
regular order. They had been emptied, and were now 



TRACES. 423 

filled with limestone pebbles, perhaps to serve as con- 
venient ballast on boating expeditions. 

These vi^ere among the more obvious vestiges of Sir 
John Franklin's party. The minor indications about 
the ground were innumerable : fragments of canvas, 
rope, cordage, sail-cloth, tarpaulins ; of casks, iron- work, 
wood, rough and carA^ed ; of clothing, such as a blank- 
et lined by long stitches with common cotton stuff, 
and made into a sort of rude coat ; paper in scraps, 
white, waste, and journal ; a small key ; a few odds 
and ends of brass-work, such as might be part of the 
furniture of a locker ; in a word, the numberless re- 
liquiae of a winter resting-place. One of the papers, 
which I have preserved, has on it the notation of an 
astronomical sight, worked out to Greenwich time. 

With all this, not a written memorandum, or point- 
ing cross, or even the vaguest intimation of the condi- 
tion or intentions of the party. The traces found at 
Cape Riley and Beechy were still more baffling. The 
cairn was mounted on a high and conspicuous portion 
of the shore, and evidently intended to attract observa- 
tion ; but, though several parties examined it, digging 
round it in every direction, not a single particle of in- 
formation could be gleaned. This is remarkable ; and 
for so able and practiced an Arctic commander as Sir 
John Franklin, an incomprehensible omission. 

In a narrow interval between the hills which com.e 
down toward Beechy Island, the searching parties of 
the Rescue and Mr. Murdaugh of our own vessel found 
the tracks of a sledge clearly defined, and unmistaka- 
ble both as to character and direction. They pointed 
to the eastern shores of Wellington Sound, in the same 
general course with the traces discovered by Penny 
between Cape Spencer and Point Innes. 



424 CONCLUSIONS. 

Similar traces were seen toward Caswell's Tower 
and Cape Riley, which gave additional proofs of sys- 
tematic journeyings. They could be traced through 
the comminuted limestone shingle in the direction of 
Cape Spencer; and at intervals further on were scraps 
of paper, lucifer matches, and even the cinders of the 
temporary fire. The sledge parties must have been 
regularly organized, for their course had evidently been 
the subject of a previous reconnoissance. I observed 
their runner tracks not only in the limestone crust, 
but upon some snow slopes further to the north. It 
was startling to see the evidences of a travel nearly 
six years old, preserved in intaglio on a material so 
perishable. 

The snows of the Arctic regions, by alternations of 
congelation and thaw, acquire sometimes an ice-like 
durability ; but these traces had been covered by the 
after-snows of five winters. They pointed, like the 
Sastrugi, or snow- waves of the Siberians, to the march- 
es of the lost company. 

Mr. Griffin, who performed a journey of research 
along this coast toward the north, found at intervals, 
almost to Cape Bowden, traces of a passing party. A 
corked bottle, quite empty, was among these. Reach- 
ing a point beyond Cape Bowden, he discovered the 
indentation or bay which now bears his name, and on 
whose opposite shores the coast was again seen. 

It is clear to my own mind that a systematic recon- 
noissance was undertaken by Franklin of the upper 
waters of the Wellington, and that it had for its object 
an exploration in that direction as soon as the ice 
would permit. 

There were some features about this deserted home- 
stead inexpressibly touching. The frozen trough of an 



CONCLUSIONS. 425 

old water channel had served as the wash-house stream 
for the crews of the lost squadron. The tuhs, such as 
Jack makes by sawing in half the beef barrels, al- 
though no longer fed by the melted snows, remained 
as the washers had left them ^ve years ago. The lit- 
tle garden, too : I did not see it ; bat Lieutenant Osborn 
describes it as still showing the mosses and anemones 
that were transplanted by its framers. A garden im- 
plies a purpose either to remain or to return : he who 
makes it is looking to the future. The same officer 
found a pair of Cashmere gloves, carefully "laid out to 
dry, with two small stones upon the palms to keep 
them from blowing away." It would be wrong to 
measure the value of these gloves by the price they 
could be bought for in Bond Street or Broadway, The 
Arctic traveler they belonged to intended to come back 
for them, and did not probably forget them in his 
hurry. 

The facts I have mentioned, almost all of them, have 
been so ably analyzed already, that I might be ex- 
cused from venturing any deductions of my own. But 
it was impossible to review the circumstances as we 
stood upon the ground without forming an opinion; 
and such as mine was, it is perhaps best that I should 
express it here. 

In the first place, it is plain that Sir John Franklin's 
consort, the Terror, wintered in 1845-6 at or near the 
promontory pf Beechy ; that at least part of her crew 
remained on board of her ; and that some of the crew 
of the flag-ship, the Erebus, if not the ship herself, were 
also there. It is also plain that a part of one or both 
these crews was occupied during a portion of the win- 
ter in the various pursuits of an organized squadron, 
at an encampment on the isthmus I have described, 



426 CONJECTURE. 

a position which commanded a full view of Lancaster 
Sound to the east of south, and of Wellington Chan- 
nel extending north. It may be fairly inferred, also, 
that the general health of the crews had not suffered 
severely, three only having died out of a hundred and 
thirty odd ; and that in addition to the ordinary details 
of duty, they were occupied in conducting and comput- 
ing astronomical observations, making sledges, prepar- 
ing their little anti-scorbutic garden patches, and ex- 
ploring the eastern shore of the channel. Many facts 
that we ourselves observed made it seem probable that 
Franklin had not, in the first instance, been able to 
prosecute his instructions for the Western search ; and 
the examinations made so fully since by Captain Aus- 
tin's officers have proved that he never reached Cape 
Walker, Banks' Land, Melville Island, Prince Regent's 
Inlet, or any point of the sound considerably to the 
west or southwest. The whole story of our combined 
operations in and about the channel shows that it is 
along its eastern margin that the water-leads occur 
most frequently : natural causes of general application 
may be assigned for this, some of which will readily 
suggest themselves to the physicist ; but I have only 
to do here with the recognized fact. 

So far I think we proceed safely. The rest is con- 
jectural. Let us suppose the season for renewed prog- 
ress to be approaching ; Franklin and his crews, with 
their vessels, one or both, looking out anxiously from 
their narrow isthmus for the first openings of the ice. 
They come : a gale of wind has severed the pack, and 
the drift begins. The first clear water that would meet 
his eye would be close to the shore on which he had 
his encampment. Would he wait till the continued 
drift had made the navigation practicable in Lancas- 



CONJECTURE. 427 

ter Sound, and then retrace his steps to try the upper 
regions of Baffin's Bay, which he could not reach with- 
out a long" circuit ; or would he press to the north 
through the open lead that lay before him ? Those 
who know Franklin's character, his declared opinions, 
his determined purpose, so well portrayed in the late- 
ly published letters of one of his officers, will hardly 
think the question difficult to answer : his sledges had 
already pioneered the way. We, the searchers, were 
ourselves tempted, by the insidious openings to the 
north in Wellington Channel, to push on in the hope 
that some lucky chance might point us to an outlet 
beyond. Might not the same temptation have had its 
influence for Sir John Franklin ? A careful and dar- 
ing navigator, such as he was, would not wait for the 
lead to close. I can imagine the dispatch with which 
the observatory would be dismantled, the armorer's es- 
tablishment broken up, and the camp vacated. I can 
understand how the preserved meat cans, not very val- 
uable, yet not worthless, might be left piled upon the 
shore ; how one man might leave his mittens, another 
his blanket coat, and a third hurry over the search for 
his lost key. And if 1 were required to conjecture 
some explanation of the empty signal cairn, I do not 
know what I could refer it to but the excitement at- 
tendant on just such a sudden and unexpected release 
from a weary imprisonment, and the instant prospect 
of energetic and perilous adventure. 




CHAPTEE XXXIL 
THE FIRST AMEEICAN EXPEDITION. 

(continued.) 

. ^'August 28. Strange enough, during the night, 
Captain Austin, of her majesty's search squadron, with 
his flag-ship the Resolute, entered the same little in- 
dentation in which five of us were moored before. His 
steam-tender, the Pioneer, grounded off the point of 
Beechy Island, and is now in sight, canted over by the 
ice nearly to her beam ends. 

" I called this morning on Sir John Ross, and had a 
long talk with him. He said that, as far back as 1847, 
anticipating the ' detention' of Sir John Franklin — I 
use his own word — he had volunteered his services for 
an expedition of retrieve, asking for the purpose four 
small vessels, something like our own ; but no one list- 
ened to him. Volunteering again in 1848, he was 
told that his nephew's claim to the service had re- 
ceived a recognition ; whereupon his own was with- 
drawn. * I told Sir John,' said Ross, * that my own ex- 
perience in these seas proved that all these sounds and 
inlets may, by the caprice or even the routine of sea- 
sons, be closed so as to prevent any egress, and that a 
missing or shut-off party must have some means of 
falling back. It was thus I saved myself from the 
abandoned Victory by a previously constructed house 
for wintering, and a boat for temporary refuge.' All 
this, he says, he pressed on Sir John Franklin before 



VISIT TO THE RESOLUTE. 429 

he set out, and he thinks that Melville Island is now 
the seat of such a house-asylum. * For, depend upon 
it,' he added, * Franklin v^ill be expecting some of us 
to be following on his traces. Now, may it be that 
the party, whose winter quarters we have discovered, 
sent out only exploring detachments along Wellington 
Sound in the spring, and then, when themselves re- 
leased, continued on to the west, by Cape Hotham and 
Barrow's Straits V I have given this extract from my 
journal, though the theory it suggests has since been 
disproved by Lieutenant M^Clintock, because the tone 
and language of Sir John Ross may be regarded as 
characteristic of this manly old seaman. 

" I next visited the Resolute. I shall not here say 
how. their perfect organization and provision for win- 
ter contrasted with those of our own little expedition. 
I had to shake off a feeling almost of despondency 
when I saw how much better fitted they were to grap- 
ple with the grim enemy, Cold. Winter, if we may 
judge of it by the clothing and warming appliances of 
the British squadron, must be something beyond our 
power to cope with ; for, in comparison with them, we 
have nothing, absolutely nothing. 

" The officers received me, for I was alone, with the 
cordiality of recognized brotherhood. They are a gen- 
tlemanly, well-educated set of men, thoroughly up to 
the history of what has been done by others, and full 
of personal resource. Among them I was rejoiced to 
meet an old acquaintance. Lieutenant Brown, whose 
admirably artistic sketches I had seen in Haghe's lith- 
otints, at Mr. Grinnell's, before leaving New York. 
When we were together last, it was among the trop- 
ical jungles of Luzon, surrounded by the palm, the 
cycas, and bamboo, in the glowing extreme of vegeta- 



430 VISIT TO PENNY. 

ble exuberance : here we are met once more, in the 
stinted reo^ion of lichen and mosses. He was then a 
j unior, under Sir Edward Belcher : I — what I am yet. 
The lights and shadows of a naval life are nowhere 
better, and, alas ! nowhere worse displayed, than in 
these remote accidental greetings. 

" Returning, I paid a visit to Penny's vessels, and 
formed a very agreeable acquaintance with the med- 
ical officer. Dr. R. Anstruther Goodsir, a brother of as- 
sistant surgeon Goodsir of Franklin's flag-ship. 

"In commemoration of the gathering of the search- 
ing squadrons within the little cove of Beechy Point, 
Commodore Austin has named it, very appropriately. 
Union Bay. It is here the Mary is deposited as an 
asylum to fall back upon in case of disaster. 

" The sun is traveling rapidly to the south, so tha.t 
our recently glaring midnight is now a twilight gloom. 
The coloring OA'^er the hills at Point Innes this even- 
ing was sombre, but in deep reds ; and the sky had an 
inhospitable coldness. It made me thoughtful to see 
the long shadows stretching out upon the snow toward 
the isthmus of the Graves. 

" The wind is from the north and westward, and the 
ice is so driven in around us as to grate and groan 
against the sides of our little vessel. The masses, 
though small, are very thick, and by the surging of 
the sea have been rubbed as round as pebbles. They 
make an abominable noise." 

The remaining days of August were not character- 
ized by any incident of note. We had the same al- 
ternations of progress and retreat through the ice as 
before, and without sensibly advancing toward the 
western shore, which it was now our object to reach. 
The next extracts from my journal are of the dute of 
September 3d. 



ICE DRIFTING. 431 

*• After floating down, warping, to avoid the loose 
ice, we finally cast off in comparatively open water, 
and began beating toward Cape Spencer to get round 
the field. Once there, we got along finely, sinking the 
eastern shore by degrees, and nearing the undelineated 
coasts of Cornwallis Island. White whales, narwhals, 
seals — among them the Phoca leonina with his pufied 
cheeks — and two bears, were seen. 

" The ice is tremendous, far ahead of any thing we 
have met with. The thickness of the upraised tables 
is sometimes fourteen feet ; and the hummocks are so 
ground and distorted by the rude attrition of the floes, 
that they rise up in cones like crushed sugar, some of 
them forty feet high. But that the queer life we are 
leading — a life of constant exposure and excitement, 
and one that seems more like the * roughing it' of a 
land party than the life of shipboard — has inured us 
to the eccentric fancies of the ice, our position would 
be a sleepless one. 

^^ September 4, 2 A.M. Was awakened by Captain 
De Haven to look at the ice : an impressive sight. We 
were fast with three anchors to the main floe ; and 
now, though the wind was still from the northward, 
and therefore in opposition to the drift, the floating 
masses under the action of the tide came with a west- 
ward trend directly past us. Fortunately, they were 
not borne down upon the vessels ; but, as they went 
by in slow procession to the west, our sensations were, 
to say the least, sensations. It was very grand to see 
up-piled blocks twenty feet and more above our heads, 
and to wonder whether this fellow would strike our 
main-yard or clear our stern. Some of the moving 
hummocks were thirty feet high. They grazed us ; 
but a little projection of the main field to windward 
shied them ofl*. 



432 ICE FORMING. 

"We were seated cosily around our little table in 
the cabin, imagining our harbor of land ice perfectly- 
secure, when we were startled by a crash. We rush- 
ed on deck just in time to see the solid floe to wind- 
ward part in the middle, liberate itself from its attach- 
ment to the shore, and bear down upon us with the 
full energy of the storm. Our lee bristled ominously 
half a ship's length from us, and to the east was the 
main drift. The Rescue was first caught, nipped 
astern, and lifted bodily out of water; fortunately, she 
withstood the pressure, and rising till she snapped her 
cable, launched into open water, crushing the young 
ice before her. The Advance, by hard warping, drew 
a little closer to the cove ; and, a moment after, the ice 
drove by, j ust clearing our stern. Commodore Austin's 
vessels were imprisoned in the moving fragments, and 
carried helplessly past us. In a very little while they 
were some four miles off." 

The summer was now leaving us rapidly. The 
thermometer had been at 21° and 23° for several nights, 
and scarcely rose above 32° in the daytime. Our lit- 
tle harbor at Barlow's Inlet was completely blocked 
in by heavy masses ; the new ice gave plenty of sport 
to the skaters ; but on shipboard it was uncomfortably 
cold. As yet we had no fires below; and, after draw- 
ing around me the India-rubber curtains of my berth, 
with my lamp burning inside, I frequently wrote my 
journal in a freezing temperature. "This is not very 
cold, no doubt" — I quote from an entry of the 8th — 
" not very cold to your forty-five minus men of Arctic 
winters ; but to us poor devils from the zone of the 
liriodendrons and peaches, it is rather cool for the 
September month of water-melons. My bear with his 
arsenic swabs is a solid lump, and some birds that 



RENDEZVOUS. 433 

are waiting to be skinned are absolutely rigid with 
frost." 

In the afternoon of this day, the 8th, we went to 
work, all hands, officers included, to cut up the young 
ice and tow it out into the current : once there, the drift 
carried it rapidly to the south. We cleared away in 
this manner a space of some forty yards square, and at 
five the next morning were rewarded by being again 
under weigh. We were past Cape Hotham by break- 
fast-time on the 9th, and in the afternoon were beat- 
ing to the west in Lancaster Sound. 

" The sound presented a novel spectacle to us ; the 
young ice glazing it over, so as to form a viscid sea of 
sludge and tichly -benders, from the northern shore to 
the pack, a distance of at least ten miles. This was 
mingled with the drift floes from Wellington Chan- 
nel ; and in them, steaming away manfully, were the 
Resolute and Pioneer. The wind was dead ahead ; 
yet, but for the new ice, there was a clear sea to the 
west. What, then, was our mortification, first, to see 
our pack-bound neighbors force themselves from their 
prison and steam ahead dead in the wind's eye, and, 
next, to be overhauled by Penny, and passed by both 
his brigs. We are now the last of all the searchers, 
except perhaps old Sir John, who is probably yet in 
Union Bay, or at least east of the straits. 

" The shores along which we are passing are of the 
same configuration with the coast to the east of Beechy 
Island ; the cliffs, however, are not sd high, and their 
bluff" appearance is relieved occasionally by terraces 
and shingle beach. The lithological characters of the 
limestone appear to be the same. 

" We are all together here, on a single track but lit- 
tle wider than the Delaware or Hudson. There is no 



434 RENDEZVOUS 

getting out of it, for the shore is on one side and the 
fixed ice close on the other. All have the lead of us, 
and we are working only to save a distance. Omman- 
ney must be near Melville by this time: pleasant, 
very ! 

" Closing memoranda for the day : 1. I have the 
rheumatism in my knees ; 2. I left a bag containing 
my dress suit of uniforms, and, what is worse, my win- 
ter suit of furs, and with them my double-barrel gun, 
on board Austin's vessel. The gale of the 7th has 
carried him and them out of sight. 

^^ September 10. Unaccountable, most unaccounta- 
ble, the caprices of this ice-locked region ! Here we 
are again all together, even Ommanney with the rest. 
The Resolute, Intrepid, Assistance, Pioneer, Lady 
Franklin, Sophia, Advance, and Rescue ; Austin, Om- 
manney, Penny, and De Haven, all anchored to the 
' fast' off Griffith's Island. The way to the west com- 
pletely shut out." 

^^ September 11, Wednesday. Snow, light and fleecy, 
covering the decks, and carried by our clothes into our 
little cabin. The moisture of the atmosphere, con- 
denses over the beams, and trickles down over the 
lockers and bedding. We are still along side of the 
fixed ice off Griffith's Island, and the British squad- 
ron under Commodore Austin are clustered together 
within three hundred yards of us. Penny, like an in- 
defatigable old trump, as he is, is out, pushing, work- 
ing, groping in the fog. The sludge ice, that had 
driven in around us and almost congealed under our 
stern, is now by the ebb of the tide, or at least its 
change, carried out again, although the wind still sets 
toward the floe. 



A GALE. 435 

**'At three the Rescue parted her cahle's hold, and 
was carried out to sea, leaving two men, her hoat, and 
her anchors hehind. We snapped our stern-cable, lost 
our anchor, swung out, but fortunately held by the 
forward line. All the English vessels were in similar 
peril, the Pioneer being at one time actually free ; and 
Commodore Austin, who in the Resolute occupied the 
head of the line, was in momentary fear of coming 
down upon us. Altogether I have seldom seen a night 
of greater trial. The wind roared over the snow floes, 
and every thing about the vessel froze into heavy ice 
stalactites. Had the main floe parted, we had been 
carried down with the liberated ice. Fortunately, ev- 
ery thing held ; and here we are, safe aud sound. The 
Rescue was last seen beating to windward against the 
gale, probably seeking a lee under Griflith's Island. 
This morning the snow continues in the form of a fine 
cutting drift, the water freezes wherever it touches, 
and the thermometer has been at no time above 17°. 

^'September 12, 10 P.M. Just from deck. How very 
dismal every thing seems ! The snow is driven like 
sand upon a level reach, lifted up in long curve lines, 
and then obscuring the atmosphere with a white dark- 
ness. The wind, too, is howling in a shrill minor, 
singing across the hummock ridges. The eight ves- 
sels are no longer here. The Rescue is driven out to 
sea, and poor Penny is probably to the southward. 
Five black masses, however, their cordage defined by 
rime and snow, are seen with their snouts shoved into 
the shore of ice : cables, chains, and anchors are cov- 
ered feet below the drift, and the ships adhere mys- 
teriously, their tackle completely invisible. Should 
any of us break away, the gale would carry us into 
streams of heavy floating ice ; and our running rig- 

26 



436 THE GALE. 

ging is so coated with icicles as to make it impossible 
to work it. The thermometer stands at 14°. 

"At this temperature the young ice forms in spite 
of the increasing movement of the waves, stretching 
out from the floe in long, zigzag lines of smoothness 
resembling watered silk. The loose ice seems to have 
a southerly and easterly drift ; and, from the increas- 
ing distance of Griffith's Island, seen during occasional 
intervals, we are evidently moving en masse to the 
south. 

"Now when you remember that we are in open 
sea, attached to precarious ice, and surrounded by 
floating streams ; that the coast is unknown, and the 
ice forming inshore, so as to make harbors, if we knew 
of them, inaccessible, you may suppose that our posi- 
tion is far from pleasant. One harbor was discovered 
by a lieutenant of the Assistance some days ago, and 
named Assistance Harbor, but that is out of the ques- 
tion ; the wind is not only a gale, but ahead. Had 
we the quarters of Capua before us, we should be un- 
able to reach them. It is a windward shore. 

"11 P.M. Captain De Haven reports ice forming 
fast: extra anchors are out; thermometer +8°. The 
British squadron, under Austin, have fires in full blast 
we are without them still. 

" 12 M. In bed, reading or trying to read. The gale 
has increased ; the floes are in upon us from the east- 
ward ; and it is evident that we are all of us drifting 
bodily, God knows where, for we have no means of 
taking observations. 

" Sejjtcmber 13, 10 A.M. Found, on awaking, thai 
at about three this morning the squadron commenced 
getting under weigh. The rime-coated rigging wa«i 
cleared ; the hawsers thashed ; the ice-clogged boats 



FOR Griffith's island. 437 

hauled in ; the steamers steamed, and off went the 
rest of us as we might. This step was not taken a 
whit too soon, if it be ordained that we are yet in 
time ; for the stream-ice covers the entire horizon, and 
the large floe or main which we have deserted is bare- 
ly separated from the drifting masses. The.Rescue is 
now the object of our search. Could she be found, 
the captain has determined to turn his steps home- 
ward. 

"11 20 A.M. "V^"^ are working, i. ^., beating our way 
in the narrow leads intervening irregularly between 
the main ice and the drift. We have gained at least 
two miles to windward of Austin's squadron, who are 
unable, in spite of steamers, to move along these dan- 
gerous passages like ourselves. Our object is to reach 
Griffith's Island, from which we have drifted some fif- 
teen miles with the main ice, and then look out for 
our lost consort. 

" The lowest temperature last night was +5°, but 
the wind makes it colder to sensation. We are grind- 
ing through newly-formed ice three inches thick ; the 
perfect consolidation being prevented by its motion and 
the wind. Even in the little fireless cabin in which 
1 now write, water and coffee are freezing, and the 
mercury stands at 29°. 

" The navigation is certainly exciting. I have nev- 
er seen a description in my Arctic readings of any 
thing like this. We are literally running for our lives, 
surrounded by the imminent hazards of sudden con- 
solidation in an open sea. All minor perils, nips, 
bumps, and sunken bergs are discarded ; we are stag- 
gering along under all sail, forcing our way while we 
can. One thump, received since I commenced writ- 
ing, jerked the time-keeper from our binnacle dow25 



438 ORDER FOR RETURN. 

the cabin hatch, and, but for our strong bows, seven 
and a half solid feet, would have stove us in. Anoth- 
er time, we cleared a tongue of the main pack by rid- 
ing it down at eight knots. Commodore Austin seems 
caught by the closing floes. This is really sharp work. 

" 4 P. M. We continued beating toward Griffith's Is- 
land, till, by doubling a tongue of ice, we were able to 
force our way. The English seemed to watch our 
movements, and almost to follow in our wake, till we 
came to a comparatively open space, about the area of 
Washington Square, where we stood off and on, the 
ice being too close upon the eastern end of Griffith's 
Island to permit us to pass. Our companions in this 
little vacancy were Captain Ommanney's Assistance ; 
Osborne's steam tender the Pioneer, and Kater's steam- 
er the Intrepid. Commodore Austin's vessel was to 
the southward, entangled in the moving ice, but mo- 
mentarily n earing the open leads. 

While thus boxing about on one of our tacks, we 
neared the north edge of our little opening, and were 
hailed by the Assistance with the glad intelligence of the 
Rescue close under the island. Our captain, who was 
at his usual post, conning the ship from the foretop- 
sail yard, made her out at the same time, and immedi- 
ately determined upon boring the intervening ice. 
This was done successfully, the brig bearing the hard 
knocks nobly. Strange to say, the English vessels, 
now joined by Austin, followed in our wake — a com- 
pliment, certainly, to De Haven's ice-mastership. 

We were no sooner through, than signal was made 
to the Rescue to ' cast off,' and our ensign was run up 
from the peak : the captain had determined upon at- 
tempting a return to the United States. 

In a little while we had the Rescue in tow, and were 



THE RESCUE NIPPED. 439 



heading to the east. She had had a fearful night of 
it after leaving us. She beat about, short-handed, 
clogged with ice, and with the thermometer at 8°. 
The snow fell heavily, and the rigging was a solid, al- 
most unmanageable lump. Steering, or rather beating, 
she made, on the evening of the 12th, the southern 
edge of Griffith's Island, and by good luck and excel- 
lent management succeeded in holding to the land 
hummocks. She had split her rudder-post so as to 
make her uniuorJcahle, and now we have her in tow. 
An anchor with its fluke snapped — her best bower ; 
and her little boat, stove in by the ice, was cut adrift. 

We were now homeward bound, but a saddened 
homeward bound for all of us. The vessels of our 
gallant brethren soon lost themselves in the mist, and 
we steered our course with a fresh breeze for Cape 
Hotham. 

The night gave us now three hours of complete 
darkness. It was danger to run on, yet equally dan- 
ger to pause. Grim winter was following close upon 
our heels ; and even the captain, sanguine and fear- 
less in emergency as he always proved himself, as he 
saw the tenacious fields of sludge and pancake thick- 
ening around us, began to feel anxious. Mine was a 
jumble of sensations. I had been desirous to the last 
degree that we might remain on the field of search, 
and could hardly ^be dissatisfied at what promised to 
realize my wish. Yet I had hoped that our wintering 
would be near our English friends, that in case of 
trouble or disease we might mutually sustain each 
other. But the interval of fifty miles between us, in 
these inhospitable deserts, was as complete a separa- 
tion as an entire continent ; and I confess that I look- 
ed at the dark shadows closing around Barlow's Inlet^ 



440 FROZEN IN. 

the prison from which we cut ourselves on the seventh, 
just six days before, with feelings as sombre as the 
landscape itself 

The sound of our vessel crunching her way through 
the new ice is not easy to be described. It was not 
like the grinding of the old formed ice, nor was it 
the slushy scraping of sludge. We may all of us re- 
member, in the skating frolics of early days, the pecu- 
liar reverberating outcry of a pebble, as we tossed it 
from us along the edges of an old mill-dam, and heard 
it dying away in echoes almost musical. Imagine 
such a tone as this, combined with the whir of rapid 
motion, and the rasping noise of close-grained sugar. 
I was listening to the sound in my little den, after a 
sorrowful day, close upon zero, trying to warm up my 
stiffened limbs. Presently it grew less, then increased, 
then stopped, then went on again, but jerking and ir- 
regular ; and then it waned, and waned, and waned 
away to silence. 

Down came the captain : " Doctor, the ice has caught 
us : we are frozen up." On went my furs at once. As 
I reached the deck, the wind was there blowing stiff, 
and the sails were filled and j^uffing with it. It was 
not yet dark enough to hide the smooth surface of ice 
that filled up the horizon, holding the American expe- 
dition in search of Sir John Franklin imbe.dded in its 
centre. There we were, literally frozen tight in the 
mid-channel of Wellington's Straits. 

The region, which ten days before was teeming with 
animal life, was now almost deserted. We saw but 
one narwhal and a few seal. The Ivory gull too, a 
solitary traveler, occasionally flitted by us ; but the 
season had evidently wrought its change. 

Several flocks of the snow bunting had passed over 



DRIFTING. 441 

US while we were attached to the main ice off Griffith's 
Island, and a single raven was seen from the Rescue 
at her holding grounds. The Brent geese, however, 
the dovekies, the divers, indeed all the anatidae, the 
white whales, the walrus, the bearded and the hirsute 
seal, the white bear, whatever gave us life and inci- 
dent, had vanished. 

For some days after this, an obscurity of fog and 
snow made it impossible to see more than a few hun- 
dred yards from the ship. The little area remained 
fast bound, the ice bearing us readily, though a very 
slight motion against the sides of the vessel seemed 
to show that it was not perfectly attached to the shores. 
But as I stood on deck in the afternoon of the 16th, 
watching the coast to the east of us, as the clouds 
cleared away for the first time, it struck me that its 
configuration was unknown to me. By-and-by, Cape 
Beechy, the isthmus of the Graves, loomed up ; and 
we then found that we were a little to the north of 
Cape Bowden. 

The next two days this northward drift continued 
without remission. The wind blew strong from the 
southward and eastward, sometimes approaching to a 
gale ; but the ice-pack around us retained its tenacity, 
and increased rapidly in thickness. 

Yet every now and then we could see that at some 
short distance it was broken by small pools of water, 
which would be effaced again, soon after they were 
formed, by an external pressure. At these times our 
vessels underwent a nipping on a small scale. The 
smoother ice-field that held us would be driven in, pil- 
ng itself in miniature hummocks about us, sometimes 
higher than our decks, and much too near them to 
leave us a sense of security against their further ad- 



442 N I P P I N G s . 

vance. The noises, too, of whining puppies and swarm- 
ing bees made part of these demonstrations, much as 
when the heavier masses were at work, but shriller 
perhaps, and more clamorous. 

I was aroused at midnight of the 16th by one of 
these onsets of the enemy, crunching and creaking 
against the ship's sides till the masses ground them- 
selves to powder. Our vessel was trembling like an 
ague-fit under the pressure ; and when so pinched that 
she could not vibrate any longer between the driving 
and the stationary fields, making a quick, liberating 
jump above them that rattled the movables fore and 
aft. As it wore on toward morning, the ice, now ten 
inches thick, kept crowding upon us w^ith increased 
energy ; and the whole of the ITth was passed in a 
succession of conflicts with it. 

The 18tli began with a nipping that promised more 
of danger. The banks of ice rose one above another 
till they reached the line of our bulwarks. This, too, 
continued through the day, sometimes lulling for a 
while into comparative repose, but recurring after a 
few minutes of partial intermission. While I was 
watching this angry contest of the ice-tables, as they 
clashed together in the darkness of early dawn, I saw 
for the first time the luminous appearance, which has 
been described by voyagers as attending the collision 
of berg,s. It was very marked ; as decided a phos- 
pliorescence as that of the fire-fly, or the fox-fire of the 
Virginia meadows. 

Still, amid all the tumult, our drift was toward the 
nortli. From the bearings of the coast, badly obtained 
through the fogs, it was quite evident that we had 
passed beyond any thing recorded on the charts. Cape 
Bowden, Parry's furthest headland, was at least twen- 



DRIFT TO THE NORTHWARD. 443 

ty-five miles south of us ; and our old landmarks, Cape 
Hotham and Beechy, had entirely disappeared. Even 
the high bluffs of Barlow's Inlet had gone. I hardly 
know why it was so, but this inlet had some how or 
other been for me an object of special aversion : the 
naked desolation of its frost-bitten limestone, the cav- 
ernous recess of its cliffs, the cheerlessness of its dark 
shadows, had connected it, from the first day I saw it, 
with some dimly-remembered feeling of pain. But 
how glad we should all of us have been, as we floated 
along in hopeless isolation, to find a way open to its 
grim but protecting barriers. 

" September 20. I have been keeping the first watch, 
and anxiously observing the ice ; for I am no sailor, 
and in emergency can only wake my comrades. The 
darkness is complete. ■ 

" We are now, poor devils ! drifting northward again. 
Creatures of habit, those who were anxious have for- 
gotten anxiety : glued fast here in a moving mass, we 
eat, and drink, and sleep, unmindful of the morrow. 
It is almost beyond a doubt that, if we find our way 
through the contingencies of this Arctic autumn, we 
must spend our winter in open sea. Many miles to 
the south. Captain Back passed a memorable term of 
vigil and exposure. Here, however, I do not antici- 
pate such encounters with drifting floes as are spoken 
of in Hudson's Bay. The centre of greatest cold is 
too near us and the communication with open sea too 
distant. 

"I was in the act of writing the above, when a start- 
ling sensation, resembling the spring of a well-drawn 
bow, announced a fresh movement. Running on deck, 
I found it blowing a furious gale, and the ice again in 
motion. I use the word motion inaccurately. The 



444 IN WELLINGTON CHANNEL. 

field, of which we are a part, is always in motion; 
that is, drifting with wind or current. It is only when 
other ice bears down upon our own, or our own ice is 
borne in against other floes, that pressure and resist- 
ance make us conscious of motion. 

'' The ice was again in motion. The great expanse 
of recently-formed solidity, already bristling with hum- 
mocks, had up to this moment resisted the enormous 
incidence of a heavy gale. Suddenly, however, the 
pressure increasing beyond its strength, it yielded. 
The twang of a bow-string is the only thing I can 
compare it to. In a single instant the broad field was 
rent asunder, cracked in every conceivable direction, 
tables ground against tables, and masses piled over 
masses. The sea seemed to be churning ice. 

" By the time I had yoked my neck in its scrape, 
and got up upon deck, the ice had piled np a couple 
of feet above our bulwarks. In less than another min- 
ute it had toppled over again, and we were floating 
helplessly in a confused mass of broken fragments. 
Fortunately the Rescue remained fixed ; our hawser 
was fast to her stern, and by it we were brought side 
by side again. Night passed anxiously; i. e., slept in 
my clothes, and dreamed of being presented to Queen 
Victoria. 

I am reluctant to burden my pages with the wild, 
but scarcely varied incidents of our continued drift 
through Wellington Channel. We were yet to be fa- 
miliarized with the strife of the ice-tables, now broken 
up into tumbling masses, and piling themselves in 
angry confusion against our sides — now fixed in cha- 
otic disarray by the fields of new ice that imbedded 
them in a single night — again, perhaps, opening in 
treacherous pools, only to close roimd us with a force 



FIGHTING THE ENEMY. 445 

that threatened to grind our brigs to powder. I shall 
have occasion enough to speak of these things here- 
after. I give now a few extracts from my journal; 
some of which may perhaps have interest of a differ- 
ent character, though they cannot escape the sadden- 
ing monotony of the scenes that were about us. 

I begin with a partial break-up that occurred on the 
23d. 

" September 23. How shall I describe to you this 
pressure, its fearfulness and sublimity ! Nothing that 
I have seen or read of approaches it. The voices of 
the ice and the heavy swash of the overturned hum- 
mock-tables are at this moment dinning in my ears. 
' All hands' are on deck fighting our grim enemy. 

" Fourteen inches of solid ice thickness, w^ith some 
half dozen of snow, are, with the slow uniform advance 
of a mighty propelling power, driving in upon our ves- 
sel. As they strike her, the semi-plastic mass is im- 
pressed with a mould of her side, and then, urged on 
by the force behind, slides upward, and rises in great 
vertical tables. When these attain their utmost height, 
still pressed on by others, they topple over, and form 
a great embankment of fallen tables. At the same 
time others take a downward direction, and when 
pushed on, as in the other case, form a similar pile un- 
derneath. The side on which one or the other of these 
actions takes place for the time, varies with the direc- 
tion of the force, the strength of the opposite or resist- 
ing side, the inclination of the vessel, and the weight 
of the superincumbent mounds; and as these condi- 
tions follow each other in varying succession, the ves- 
sel becomes perfectly imbedded after a little while in 
crumbling and fractured ice. 

"Perhaps no vesel has ever been in this position 



446 TRAPPING FOXES. 

but our own. With matured ice, nothing of iron or 
wood could resist such pressure. As for the British 
vessels, their size would make it next to impossible 
for them to stand. Back's ' Winter' is the only thing 
I have read of that reminds me of our present predica- 
ment. No vessel has ever been caught by winter in 
these waters. 

" We are lifted bodily eighteen inches out of water. 
The hummocks are reared up around the ship, so as 
to rise in some cases a couple of feet above our bul- 
warks — five feet above our deck. They are very often 
ten and twelve feet high. All hands are out, laboring 
with picks and crowbars to overturn the fragments 
that threaten to overwhelm us. Add to this darkness, 
snow, cold, and the absolute destitution of surrounding 
shores. 

" September 2^. The hummocks around us still re- 
main without apparent motion, heaped up like snow- 
covered barriers of street rioters. We are wedged in 
a huge mass of tables, completely out of water, cra- 
dled by ice. I wish it would give us an even keel. 
We are eighteen inches higher on one quarter than 
the other. 

" Afar off, skipping from hummock to hummock, I 
saw a black fox. Poor desolate devil ! what did he, 
so far from his recorded home, seven miles from even 
the naked snow-hills of this dreary wilderness ? In 
the nightrtime I heard him bark. They set a trap for 
him ; but I secretly placed a bigger bait outside, with- 
out a snare-loop or trigger. In the morning it was 
gone, and the dead-fall had fallen upon no fox. How 
the poor, hungry thing must have enjoyed his supper! 

Our position, at the end of September, thanks to 
the rapidly increasing cold, gave promise of a certain 



FIXED FOR THE WINTER. 447 

degree of security and rest. The Advance had been 
driven, by the superior momentum of the floes that 
pressed us on one side, some two hundred and fifty 
feet into the mass of less resisting floes on the other ; 
the Rescue meanwhile remaining stationary ; and the 
two vessels were fixed for a time on two adjacent sides 
of a rectano-le, and close to each other. 

We felt that we were fixed for the winter. We ar- 
ranged our rude embankments of ice and snow around 
us, began to deposit our stores within them, and got 
out our felt covering that was to serve as our winter 
roof The temperature was severe, ranging from 1° 5, 
and 4° to "|- 10° : but the men worked with the energy 
and hope too, of pioneer settlers, when building up 
their first home in our Western forests. 

" October 1, Tuesday. To-day the work of breaking 
hold commenced. The coal immediately under the 
main hatch Was passed up in buckets, and some five 
tons piled upon the ice. The quarter-boats were hauled 
about twenty paces from our port-bow, and the sails 
covered and stacked ; in short, all hands were at work 
preparing for the winter. Little had we calculated 
the caprices of Arctic ice. 

^'About ten o'clock A» M. a large crack opened nearly 
east and west, running as far as the eye could see, 
sometimes crossing the ice-pools, and sometimes break- 
ing along the hummock ridges. The sun and moon 
will be in conjunction on the 3d ; we had notice, there- 
fore, that the spring tides are in action. 

" Captain Griffin had been dispatched with Mr. Lov- 
ell before this, to establish on the shore the site for a 
depot of provisions : at one o'clock a signal was made 
to recall them. At two P.M., seeing a seal, I ran out 
upon the ice ; but losing him, was tempted to continue 



448 ICE OPEXIXG. 

on about a mile to the eastward. The wind, which 
had been from the westward all the morning, now 
shifted to the southward, and the ice-tables began to 
be again in motion. The humming ofhees and up- 
heaving hummocks, together with exploding cracks, 
warned me back to the vessel. 

"At 3.20, while we were at dinner, commenting 
with some anxiety upon the condition of things with- 
out, that unmistakable monitor, the ' young puppies , 
began. Kuning on deck, we found a large fissure, 
nearly due north and south, in Hue with the Advance. 
A few minutes after, the entire floe on our starboard side 
was moving, and the ice breaking up in every direction. 

'' The emergency was startling enough. All hands 
turned to, officers included. The poor land party, re- 
turning at this moment, tired and dinnerless, went to 
work with the rest. Yreeland and myself worked like 
horses. Before dark, every thing was on board except 
the coal ; and of this, such were the unwearied efforts 
of our crew, that we lost but a ton or two. 

" October 3. I write at midnight. Leaving the deck, 
where I have been tramping the cold out of my joints, 
I come below to our little cabin. As I open the hatch, 
every thing seems bathed in dirty milk. A cloud of 
vapor gushes out at every chink, and, as the cold air 
travels down, it is seen condensing deeper and deeper. 
The thermometer above is at 7° below zero. 

" The brig and the ice around her are covered by a 
strange black obscurity — not a mist, nor a haze, but a 
peculiar, waving, palpable, unnatural darkness: it is 
the frosi^smoke of Arctic winters. Its range is very 
low. Climbing to the yard-arm, some thirty feet above 
the deck, I looked over a great horizon of black smoke, 
and above me saw the blue heavens without a blemish. 



SHOOTING SEAL. 449 

^ " October 4. The open pools can no longer be called 
pools; they are great ri^'ers, whose hummock-lined 
shores' look dimly through the haze. Contrasted with 
the pure white snow, their waters are black even to 
inkiness, and the silent tides, undisturbed by ripple or 
wash, pass beneath a pasty film of constantly forming 
ice. The thermometer is at 10°. Away from the 
ship, a long way, I walked over the older ice to a spot 
where the open river was as wide as the Delaware. 
Here, after some crevice-jumping and ticMy-hender 
crossing, I set myself behind a little rampart of hum- 
mocks, watching for seals. 

" As I watched, the smoke, the frost-smoke, came 
down in wreaths, like the lambent tongues of burning 
turpentine seen without a blaze. I was soon enveloped 
in crapy mist. 

" To shoot seal, one must practice the Esquimaux 
tactics of much patience and complete immobility. It 
is no fun, I assure you after full experience, to sit mo- 
tionless and noiseless as a statue, with a cold iron 
musket in your hands, and the thermometer 10° below 
zero. But by-and-by I w^as rewarded by seeing some 
overgrown Greenland calves come within shot. I 
missed. After another hour of cold expectation, they 
came again. Yery strange are these seal. A counte- 
nance between the dog and the mild African ape — an 
expression so like that of humanity, that it makes 
gun-murderers hesitate. At last, at long shot, I hit 
one. God forgive me 1 

" October 6, Sunday. A dismal day ; the wind howl- 
ing, and the snow, fine as flour, drifting into every 
chink and cranny. The cold quite a nuisance, although 
the mercury is up again to +6°- It is blowing a gale, 
What if the floe in which we are providentially glued. 



450 AGAIN DRIFTING. 

should take it into its head to break off, and carry us 
on a cruise before the wind ! 

" 12 Midnight. They report us adrift. Wind a gale 
from the northward and westward. An odd cruise 
this ! The American expedition fast in a lump of ice 
about as big as Washington Square, and driving, like 
the shanty on a raft, before a howling gale. 

" October 8. To-day seemed like a wave of the hand- 
kerchief from our receding summer. Winter is in every 
thing. Yet the skies came back to us with warm ochres 
and pinks, and the sun, albeit from a lowly altitude, 
shone out in full brightness. It was a mockery of 
warmth, however, scarcely worthy the unpretending 
sincerity of the great planet ; for the mercury, exposed 
to the full radiance of his deceitful glare, rose but two 
degrees from -f-7° to 9^^. In spite of this, the day was 
beautiful to remember, as a type of the sort of thing 
which we once shared with the world from which we 
are shut out ; a parting picture, to think about during 
the long night. These dark days, or rather the dark 
day, will soon be on us. The noon shadows of our 
long masts almost lose themselves in the distance. 

" A little white fox was caught alive in a trap this 
morning. He was an astute-visaged little scamp ; and 
although the chains of captivity, made of spun-yarn 
and leather, set hardly upon him, he could spare 
abundant leisure for bear bones and snow. He would 
drink no water. His cry resembled the inter-parox- 
ysmal yell of a very small boy undergoing spanking. 
The note came with an impulsive vehemence, that 
expressed not only fear and j)ain, but a very tolerable 
spice of anger and ill-temper. 

" He was soon reconciled, however. The very next 
day he was tame enough to feed from the hand, and 



TAMING A FOX. 451 

had lost all that startled wildness of look which is sup- 
posed to characterize his tribe. He was evidently un- 
used to man, and without the educated instinct of 
flight. Twice, when suffered to escape from the ves- 
sel, he was caught in our traps the same night. In- 
deed, the white foxes of this region — we caught more 
than thirty of them — seemed to look at us with more 
curiosity than fear. They would come directly to the 
ship's side ; and, though startled at first when we fired 
at them, soon came back. They even suffered us to 
approach them almost within reach of the hand, ran 
around us, as we gave the halloo, in a narrow circle, 
but stopped as soon as we were still, and stared us in- 
quisitively in the face. One little fellow, when we let 
him loose on the ice after keeping him prisoner for a 
day or two, scampered back again incontinently to his 
cubby-hole on the deck. There may be matter of re- 
flection for the naturalist in this. Has this animal no 
natural enemy but famine and cold ? The foxes ceased 
to visit us soon after this, owing probably to the un- 
certain ice between us and the shore : they are shrewd 
ice-masters. 

We remained during the rest of this month ice-cra- 
dled, and drifting about near the outlet of Wellington 
Channel. Our thoughts turned irresistibly to the 
broad expanse of Lancaster Sound, which lay wild and 
rugged before us, and to the increasing probability 
that it was to be our field of trial during the long dark 
winter — perhaps our final home. 

With this feeling came an increasing desire to com- 
municate with our late associates of Union Bay. I 
had volunteered some weeks before to make this trav- 
erse, and had busied myself with arrangements to car- 
ry it out. The Kescue's India-rubber boat was to car- 

27 



452 A PROPOSED EXCURSION. 

ry the party through the leads, and, once at the shore, 
three men were to press on with a light tent and a 
few days' provisions. The project, impracticable per- 
haps from the first, was foiled for a time by a vexa- 
tious incident. I -had made my tent of thin cotton 
cloth, so that it weighed, when completed, but four- 
teen pounds, soaking it thoroughly in a composition 
of caoutchouc, ether, and linseed oil, the last in quan- 
tity. After it was finished and nearly dried, I wrap- 
ped it up in a dry covering of coarse muslin, and placed 
it for the night in a locked closet, at some distance 
from the cook's galley, where the temperature was be- 
tween 80° and 90°. In the morning it was destroyed. 
The wrapper was there, retaining its form, and not 
discolored ; but the outer folds of the tent were smok- 
ing ; and, as I unrolled it, fold after fold showed more 
and more marks of combustion, till at the centre it 
was absolutely charred. There was neither flame nor 
spark. 

The moon made its appearance on the 13th of Oc- 
tober. At first it was like a bonfire, warming up the 
ice with a red glare ; but afterward, on the 15th, w^hen 
it rose to the height of 4°, it silvered the hummocks 
and frozen leads, and gave a softened lustre to the 
snow, through which our two little brigs stood out in 
black and solitary contrast. The stars seemed to have 
lost their twinkle, and to shine with concentrated 
brightness as if through gimlet-holes in the cobalt can- 
opy. The frost-smoke scarcely left the field of view. 
It generally hung in wreaths around the horizon; but 
it sometimes took eccentric forms ; and one night, I 
remember, it piled itself into a column at the west, and 
Aquila flamed above it like a tall beacon-light. 



DEIFTING. 453 

The month of November found us oscillating still 
with the winds and currents in the neighborhood of 
Beechy Island. Helpless as we were among the float- 
ing masses, we began to look upon the floe that car- 
ried us as a protecting barrier against the approaches 
of others less friendly ; and as the month advanced, 
and the chances increased of our passing into the 
sound, our apprehensions of being frozen up in the 
heart of the ice-pack gave place to the opposite fear 
of a continuous drift. 

'^November 29. The doubt is gone. Our floe, ice- 
cradle, safeguard, has been thrown round. Its eastern 
margin is grinding its way to the northw^ard, and the 
west is already pointing to the south. Our bov/ is to 
Baffin's Bay, and v^e are traveling toward it. So far, 
ours has been a mysterious journeying. For two 
months and more, not a sail has fluttered from our 
frozen spars ; yet we have passed from Lancaster 
Sound into the highest latitude of Wellington Chan- 
nel, one never attained before, and have been borne 
back again past our point of starting, along a capri« 
ciously varied line of drift. 

" On deck ; looming up in the very midst of the 
haze, land ! so high and close on our port beam, that 
we felt like men under a precipice. We could see 
the vertical crevices in the limestone, the recesses con- 
trasting in black shadow. What land is this ? Is it 
the eastern line of Cape Riley, or have we reached 
Cape Hicketts ? 

" There is one thing tolerably certain : the Grinnell 
expedition is quite as likely to be searched for here- 
after as to search. Poor Sir John Franklin ! this night- 
drift is an ugly omen. 



454 THE AURORA. 

" Do you remember, in the Spanish coasting craft, 
down about Barcelona and the Balearics, the queer 
little pictures of Saint Nicholas we used to see pasted 
up over the locker — a sort of mythic effigy, which the 
owner looked upon pretty much as some of our old 
commodores do the barometer, a mysterious some- 
thing, which he sneers at in fair weather, but is sure, 
in the strong faith of ignorance, to appeal to in foul ! 
Well, very much such a Saint Anthony have we down 
in the cabin here, staring us always in the face. Not 
a vermilion-daubed puerility, with a glory in Dutch 
leaf stretching from ear to ear ; but a good, genuine, 
hearty representative of English flesh and blood, a 
mouth that speaks of strong energies as well as a 
kindly heart, and an eye — the other one is spoiled in 
the lithography — that looks stern will. Many a time 
in the night have I discoursed with him, as he looked 
out on me from his gutta percha frame — * Sir John 
Franklin ; presented by his wife ;' and sometimes I 
have imagined how and where I was yet to shake the 
glorious old voyager by the hand. I see him now 
while I am writing ; his face is darkened by the lamp- 
smoke that serves us for daylight and air, and he seems 
almost disheartened. So far as help and hope of it 
are afloat in this little vessel, Sir John, well you may 
be! 

''It is Sunday: we have had religious service as 
usual, and after it that relic of effete absurdity, the 
reading of the ' Rules and Regulations.' 

"We had the aurora about 7 P.M. The thermom- 
eter at —33° and falling ; barometer. Aneroid, 30°. 74 : 

^' December 2. Drifting down the sound. Every 
thing getting ready for the chance of a hurried good- 
by to our vessels. Pork, and sugar, and bread put up 



A BREAK-UP. 455 

in small bags to fling on the ice. Every man his 
knapsack and change of clothing. Arms, bear-knives, 
ammunition out on deck, and sledges loaded. Yet 
this thermometer, at —30°, tells us to stick to the ship 
while we can. 

'' This packing up of one's carpet-bag in a hurry re- 
quires a mighty discreet memory. I have often won- 
dered that seamen in pushing off from a wreck left so 
many little wants unprovided for ; but I think I un- 
derstand it now. After bestowing away my boots, 
with the rest of a v/alking wardrobe, in a snugly- 
lashed bundle, I discovered by accident that I had left 
my stockings behind. 

'H P.M. Brooks comes down while we are dining 
to say we are driving east like a race-horse, and a 
crack ahead : ^ All hands on deck !' We had heard 
the grindings last night, and our floe in the morning 
was cut down to a diameter of three hundred vards : 
we had little to spare of it. But the new chasm is 
there, already fifteen feet wide, and about twenty -five 
paces from our bows, stretching across at right angles 
with the old cleft of October the 2d. 

" Our floe, released from its more bulky portion, seems 
to be making rapidly toward the shore. This, how- 
ever, may be owing to the separated mass having 
an opposite motion, for the darkness is intense. Our 
largest snow-hous^ is carried away; the disconsolate 
little cupola, with its flag of red bunting, should it sur- 
vive the winter, may puzzle conjectures for our En- 
glish brethren. 

''Mr. Griffin and myself walked through the gloom 
to the seat of hummock action abeam of the Rescue. 

The next four days were full of excitement and 
anxiety. One crack after another passed across our 



456 CRISIS. 

floe, still reducing its dimensions, and at one time 
bringing down our vessel again to an even keel. An 
hour afterward, the chasms would close around us with 
a sound like escaping steam. Again they would open 
under some mysterious influence ; a field of ice from 
two to four inches thick would cover them ; and then, 
w^ithout an apparent change of causes, the separated 
sides would come together with an explosion like a 
mortar, craunching the newly-formed field, and driving- 
it headlong in fragments for fifty feet upon the floe till 
it piled against our bulwarks. Every thing betokened 
a crisis. Sledges, boats, packages of all sorts, were dis- 
posed in order ; contingencies were met as they ap- 
proached by new delegations of duty ; every man was 
at work, officer and seaman alike ; for necessity, when 
it spares no one, is essentially democratic, even on ship- 
board. The Rescue, crippled and thrown away from 
us to the further side of a chasm, was deserted, and 
her company consolidated with ours. Our own brig 
groaned and quivered under the pressure against her 
sides. I give my diary for December 7. 

^^ December 7, Saturday. The danger which sur- 
rounds us is so immediate, that in the bustle of prep- 
aration for emergency I could not spend a moment 
upon my journal. Now the little knapsack is made 
up again, and the blanket sewed and strapped. The 
little home Bible at hand, and the ice-clothes ready 
for a jump. 





cmsis. 



457 





Dec. 6. 



" The above is a rough idea of our last three days' 
positions and changes. 

'' The ice, as I have sketched it, December 7, began 
to close at 11 A.M., and, at the same time, the brig 
was driven toward the open crack of December 4 (c). 
At 1 P.M. this closed on us with fearful nipping. 

" 1 P.M. Ean on deck. The ice was comparatively 
quiescent when I attempted to write ; but it recom- 
menced with a steady pressure, which must soon prove 
irresistible. 

My journal does not tell the story ; but it is worth 
noting, as it illustrates the sedative effect of a protract- 
ed succession of hazards. Our brig had just mounted 
the floe, and as we stood on the ice watching her vi- 
bration, it seemed so certain that she must come over 
on her beam-ends, that our old boatswain, Brooks, 
called out to " stand from under." At this moment 
it occurred to one of the officers that the fires had not 
been put out, and that the stores remaining on board 
would be burned by the falling of the stoves. Swing- 
ing himself back to the deck, and rushing below, he 
found two persons in the cabin ; the officer who had 
been relieved from watch-duty a few minutes before, 
quietly seated at the mess-table, and the steward as 
quietly waiting on him. " You are a meal ahead of 
me," he said ; " you didn't think I was going out upon 
the ice without my dinner." 



458 A EACE OF PALE FACES. 

^^ December 21, Saturday. To-day at noon we saw, 
dimly looming up from the redness of the southern 
horizon, a low range of hills ; among them some cones 
of great height, mountains of a character differing from 
the naked table-lands of the northern coast. The land 
on the other side of Croker's Bay, with one high head- 
land, supposed to be Cape Warrender, is in view. 
From all of which it is clear that we are drifting reg- 
ularly on toward Baffin's Bay. 

"An opening occurred last night in the ice to the 
northward. It is not more than a hundred yards from 
us, and it is already seventy wide. 

" Our men are hard at work preparing for the Christ- 
mas theatre, the arrangements exclusively their own. 
But to-morrow is a day more welcome than Christmas 
— the solstitial day of greatest darkness, from which 
we may begin to date our returning light. It makes 
a man feel badly to see the faces around him bleach- 
ing into waxen paleness. Until to-day, as a looking- 
glass does not enter into an Arctic toilet, I thought I 
was the exception, and out of delicacy said nothing 
about it to my comrades. One of them, introducing 
the topic just now, told me, with an utter unconscious- 
ness of his own ghostliness, that I was the palest of 
the party. So it is, * All men think all men,' &:c. 
Why, the good fellow is as white as a cut potato !" 

In truth, we were all of us at this time undergoing 
changes unconsciously. The hazy obscurity of the 
nights we had gone through made them darker than 
the corresponding nights of Parry. The complexions 
of my comrades, and my own too, as I found soon after- 
ward, were toned down to a peculiar waxy paleness. 
Our eyes were more recessed, and strangely clear. 
Complaints of shortness of breath became general. 



THE MIDNIGHT OF THE YEAE. 459 

^'Dece^nher 22, Sunday. The solstice ! — the midnight 
of the year ! It commences with a new movement in 
the ice, the open lead of yesterday piling up into hum- 
mocks on our port-beam. No harm done. 

"The wind is from the west, increasing in fresh- 
ness since early in the morning. The weather over- 
cast ; even the moon unseen, and no indications of our 
drift. We could not read print, not even large news- 
paper type, at noonday. We have been unable to leave 
the ship unarmed for some time on account of the 
bears. We remember the story of poor Barentz, one 
of our early predecessors. One of our crew, Blinn, a 
phlegmatic Dutchman, walked out to-day toward the 
lead, a few hundred yards off, in search of a seal-hole. 
Suddenly a seal rose close by him in the sludge-ice : 
he raised his gun to fire ; and, at the same instant, a 
large bear jumped over the floe, and by a dive followed 
the seal. Blinn's musket snapped. He was glad to 
get on board again. 

''December 25. 'Y^ Christmas of y® Arctic cruisers !' 
Our Christmas passed without a lack of the good things 
of this life. ' Goodies' we had galore ; but that best 
of earthly blessings, the communion of loved sympa- 
thies, these Arctic cruisers had not. It was curious to 
observe the depressing influences of each man's home 
thoughts, and absolutely saddening the eflbrt of each 
man to impose upon his neighbor and be very boon and 
jolly. We joked incessantly, but badly, and laughed 
incessantly, but badly too ; ate of good things, and 
drank up a moiety of our Heidsiek ; and then we sang 
negro songs, wanting only tune, measure, and harmony, 
but abounding in noise ; and after a closing bumper 
to Mr. Grinnell, adjourned with creditable jollity from 
table to the theatre. 



460 CHRISTMAS FROLICS. 

"It was on deck, of course, but veiled from the sky 
by our felt covering. A large ship's ensign, stretched 
from the caboose to the bulwarks, was understood to 
hide the stage, and certain meat-casks and candle- 
boxes represented the parquet. The thermometer 
gave us —6° at first; but the favoring elements soon 
changed this to the more comfortable temperature of 
-40. 

"Never had I enjoyed the tawdry quackery of the 
stage half so much. The theatre has always been to 
me a wretched simulation of realities ; and I have too 
little sympathy with the unreal to find pleasure in it 
long. Not so our Arctic theatre : it was one continual 
frolic from beginning to end. 

" The ' Blue Devils :' God bless us ! but it was very, 
very funny. None knew their parts, and the prompter 
could not read glibly enough to do his office. Every 
thing, whether jocose, or indignant, or commonplace, 
or pathetic, was delivered in a high-tragedy monotone 
of despair ; five words at a time, or more or less, ac- 
cording to the facilities of the prompting. Megrim, 
with a pair of seal-skin boots, bestowed his gold upon 
the gentle Annette ; and Annette, nearly six feet high, 
received it with mastodonic grace. Annette was an 
Irishman named Daly ; and I might defy human be- 
ing to hear her, while balanced on the heel of her boot, 
exclaim, in rich masculine brogue, ' Och, feather !' with- 
out roaring. Bruce took the Landlord, Benson was 
James, and the gentle Annette and the wealthy Me- 
grim were taken by Messrs. Daly and Johnson. 

"Alter this followed the Star Spangled Banner; then 
a complicated Marseillaise by our French cook, Hen- 
ri ; then a sailor's hornpipe by the diversely-talented 
Bruce ; the orchestra — Stewart, playing out tlie inter- 



THE DRIFT. 461 

vals on the Jews-harp from the top of a lard-cask. In 
fact, we were very happy fellows. We had had a 
foot-race in the morning over the midnight ice for three 
purses of a flannel shirt each, and a splicing of the 
main-hrace. The day was night, the stars shining 
feehly through the mist. 

" But even here that kindly custom of Christmas- 
gifting was not forgotten. I found in my morning 
stocking a jack-knife, symholical of my altered looks, 
a piece of Castile soap — this last article in great re- 
quest — a Jews-harp, and a string of beads ! On the 
other hand, I prescribed froifi the medical stores two 
bottles of Cognac, to protect the mess from indiges- 
tion. So passed Christmas. Thermometer, mini- 
mum, — 16°; maximum, —7°. Wind west. 

^'December 28, Saturday. From my very soul do I 
rejoice at the coming sun. Evidences not to be mis- 
taken convince me that the health of our crew, never 
resting upon a very sound basis, must sink under the 
continued influences of darkness and cold. The tem- 
perature and foulness of air in the between-deck Tar- 
tarus can not be amended, otherwise it would be my 
duty to urge a change. Between the smoke of lamps, 
the dry heat of stoves, and the fumes of the galley, all 
of them unintermitting, what wonder that we grow 
feeble. The short race of Christmas-day knocked up 
all our officers except Griffin. It pained me to see my 
friend Lovell, our strongest man, fainting with the ex- 
ertion. The symptoms of scurvy among the crew are 
still increasing, and becoming more general. Faces 
are growing pale; strong men pant for breath upon 
ascending a ladder ; and an indolence akin to apathy 
seems to be creeping over us. I long for the light. 
Dear, dear sun, no wonder you are worshiped ! 



462 RETURNING LIGHT. 

"11. Can read ordinary over-sized print. Started 
on a walk, the first time for twenty-odd days. Saw 
the great lead, and traveled it for a couple of miles 
expanding into a plain of recent ice. 

" M. Passed noon on the ice. Can read diamond 
type. Stars of the first magnitude only visible. Sat- 
urn magnificent ! 

"1 P.M. With difiiculty read large type. The 
clouds gathering in black stratus over the red light 
to the south. 

" 2. The heavens studded with stars in their group- 
ings. Mght is again over every thing, although the 
minor stars are not yet seen. 

" Since the first of this month, we have drifted in 
solitude one hundred and seventy miles, skirting the 
northern shores of Lancaster Sound. Baffin's Bay is 
ahead of us, its current setting strong toward the south. 
What will be the result when the mighty masses of 
these two Arctic seas come together !" 

1851, January 1, AVednesday. The first day of 1851 
set in cold, the thermometer at —28°, and closing at 
— 31°. We celebrated it by an extra dinner, a plum- 
cake unfrosted for the occasion, and a couple of our re- 
siduary bottles of wine. But there was no joy in our 
merriment : we were weary of the night, as those who 
watch for the morning. 

It was not till the od that the red southern zone 
continued long enough to give us assurance of advanc- 
ing day. Then, for at least three hours, the twilight 
enabled us to walk without stumbling. I had a feel- 
ing of racy enjoyment as I found myself once more 
away from the ship, ranging among the floes, and 
watching the rivalry of day with night in the zenith. 
There was the sunward horizon, with its evenly-dis- 



EIGHTH OF JANUARY. 463 

tributed bands of primitive colors, blending softly into 
the clear blue overhead ; and then, by an almost magic 
transition, night occupying the western sky. Stars 
of the first magnitude, and a v^andering planet here 
and there, shone dimly near the debatable line ; but 
a little further on v^ere all the stars in their glory. 
The northern firmament had the familiar beauty of a 
pure winter night at home. The Pleiades glittered 
" like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver-braid," 
and the great stars that hang about the heads of Orion 
and Taurus were as intensely bright as if day was not 
looking out upon them from the other quarter of the 
sky. I had never seen night and day dividing the 
hemisphere so beautifully between them. 

On the 8th we had, of course, our national festivi- 
ties, and remembered freshly the hero who consecrated 
the day in our annals. The evening brought the the- 
atricals again, with extempore interludes, and a hearty 
splicing of the main-brace. It was something new, 
and not thoroughly gladsome, this commemoration of 
the victory at New Orleans under a Polar sky. There 
were men not two hundred miles from us, now our 
partners in a nobler contest, who had bled in this very 
battle. But we made the best of the occasion ; and 
if others some degrees further to the south celebrated 
it more warmly, we had the thermometer on our side, 
with its —20°, a normal temperature for the " lauda- 
tur et alget." 

But the sun was now gradually coming up toward 
the horizon : every day at meridian, and for an hour 
before and after, we were able to trace our progress 
eastward by some known headland. We had passed 
Cape Castlereagh and Cape Warrender in succession, 
and were close on the meridian of Cape Osborn. The 



464 



OUR FLOE. 



disruptions of the ice which we had encountered so 
far, had always been at the periods of spring-tide. Tlie 
sun and moon were in conjunction on the 21st of De- 
cember ; and, adopting Captain Parry's observation, 
that the greatest efflux was always within five days 
after the new moon, we had looked with some anxiety 
to the closing weeks of that month. But they had 
gone by without any unusual movement ; and there 
needed only an equally kind visitation of the January 
moon to give us our final struggle with the Baffin's 
Bay ice by daylight. 

Yet I had remarked that the southern shore of Lan- 
caster Sound extended much further out to the east- 
ward than the northern did ; and I had argued that 
we might begin to feel the current of Baffin's Bay in 
a very few days, though we were still considerably 
to the west of a line drawn from one cape to the other. 
The question received its solution without waiting for 
the moon. 

I give from my journal our position in the ice on the 
11th of January : 

^^ January 11, Saturday. The floe in which we are 
now imbedded has been steadily increasing in solid- 
ity for more than a month. Since the 8th of Decem- 
ber, not a fracture or collision has occurred to mar its 
growth. The eye can not embrace its extent. Even 
from the mast-head you look over an unbounded ex- 
panse of naked ice, bristling with contorted spires, and 
ridged by elevated axes of hummocks. The land on 
either side rises above our icy horizon ; but to the east, 
and west, there is no such interception to our wintery- 
ness. 

"The brig remains as she was tossed at our provi- 
dential escape of last month, her nose burrowing in the 




THE ADVANCE IN FEBRUARY. 




WINTER IN. THE PACK. 



COMMOTION OF THE ICE. 467 

snow, and her stern perched high ahove the rubhish. 
Walking- deck is an up and down hill work. She re- 
tains, too, her list to starboard. Her bare sides have 
been banked over again with snow to increase the 
warmth, and a formidable flight of nine ice-block steps 
admits us to the door-way of her winter cover. The 
stores, hastily thrown out from the vessel when we 
expected her to go to pieces, are still upon the little 
remnant of old floe on our port or northern side. The 
Rescue is some hundred yards off to the south of east." 

The next day things underwent a change. The 
morning was a misty one, giving us just light enough 
to make out objects that were near the ship ; the wind 
westerly, as it had been for some time, freshening per- 
haps to a breeze. The day went on quietly till noon, 
when a sudden shock brought us all up to the deck. 
Running out upon the ice, we found that a crack had 
opened between us and the Rescue, and was extending 
in a zigzag course from the northward and eastward 
to the southward and westward. At one o'clock it had 
become a chasm eight feet in width ; and as it contin- 
ued to widen, we observed a distinct undulation of the 
water about its edges. At three, it had expanded 
into a broad sheet of water, filmed over by young ice, 
through which the portions of the floe that bore our 
two vessels began to move obliquely toward each other. 
Night closed round us, with the chasm reduced to forty 
yards and still narrowing; the Rescue on her port- 
bow, two hundred yards from her late position ; the 
wind increasing, and the thermometer at —19°. 

My journal for the next day was written at broken 
intervals ; but I give it without change of form : 

'^January 13, 4 A.M. All hands have been on deck 
since one o'clock, strapped and harnessed for a fare- 



4G8 COMMOTION OF THE ICE. 

well march. The water-lane of yesterday is covered 
by i'our-inch ice ; the floes at its margin more than 
three feet thick. These have been closing for some 
time by a sliding, grinding movement, one upon the 
other ; but every now and then coming together more 
directly, the thinner ice clattering between them, and 
marking their new outline with hummock ridges. 
They have been fairly in contact for the last hour : we 
feel their pressure extending to us through the elastic 
floe in which we are cradled. There is a quivering, 
vibratory hum about the timbers of the brig, and ev- 
ery now and then a harsh rubbing creak along her 
sides, like waxed cork on a mahogany table. The 
hummocks are driven to within four feet of our coun- 
ter, and stand there looming fourteen feet high through 
the darkness. It has been a horrible commotion so 
far, with one wild, booming, agonized note, made up 
of a thousand discords ; and now comes the deep still- 
ness after it, the mysterious ice-pulse, as if the ener- 
gies were gathering for another strife. 

" 6i A.M. Another pulse ! the vibration greater than 
we have ever yet had it. If our little brig had an an- 
imated centre of sensation, and some rude force had 
torn a nerve-trunk, she could not feel it more — she 
fairly shudders. Looking out to the north, this ice 
seems to heave up slowly against the sky in black 
hills ; and as we watch them rolling toward us, the 
hills sink again, and a distorted plain of rubbish melts 
before us into the night. Ours is the contrast of ut- 
ter helplessness with illimitable power. 

*' 9.50 A.M. Brooks and myself took advantage of 
the twilight at nine o'clock to cross the hummocky 
fields to the Rescue. I can not convey an impression 
of the altered aspects of the floe. Our frozen lane has 



ICE COMMOTION. 469 

disappeared, and along the line of its recent course the 
ice is heaped up in blocks, tables, lumps, powder, and 
rubbish, often fifteen feet high. Snow covered the 
decks of the little vessel, and the disorder about it 
spoke sadly of desertion. Foot-prints of foxes were 
seen in every imaginable corner ; and near the little 
hatchway, where we had often sat in comfortable 
good-fellowship, the tracks of a large bear had broken 
the snow crust in his efforts to get below. 

" The Rescue has met the pressure upon her port- 
bow and fore-foot. Her bowsprit, already maimed by 
her adventure off Griffith's Island, is now completely 
forced up, broken short off at the gammoning. The 
ice, after nipping her severely, has piled up round her 
three feet above the bulwarks. We had looked to her 
as our first asylum of retreat ; but that is out of the 
question now ; she can not rise as we have done, and 
any action that would peril us again must bear her 
down or crush her laterally. 

" The ice immediately about the Advance is broken 
into small angular pieces, as if it had been dashed 
against a crag of granite. Our camp out on the floe, 
with its reserve of provisions and a hundred things be- 
sides, memorials of scenes we have gone through, or ap- 
pliances and means for hazards ahead of us, has been 
carried away bodily. My noble specimen of the Arc- 
tic bear is floating, with an escort of bread barrels, 
nearly half a mile off. 

" The thermometer records only — 17° ; but it blows 
at times so very fiercely that I have never felt it so 
cold : five men were frost-bitten in the attempt to save 
our stores. 

*' 9 P.M. We have had no renewal of the pressure 

since half past six this morning. We are turning in; 

28 



470 ICE COMMOTION. 

the wind blowing a fresh breeze, weather misty, ther- 
mometer at -230." 

The night brought no further change ; but toward 
morning the cracks, that formed before this a sort of 
net- work all about the vessel, began to open. The 
cause was not apparent : the wind had lulled, and we 
saw no movement of the floes. We had again the 
same voices of complaint from the ship, but they were 
much feebler than yesterday ; and in about an hour 
the ice broke up all round her, leaving an open space 
of about a foot to port, indented with the mould of her 
form. The brig was loose once more at the sides ; but 
she remained suspended by the bows and stern from 
hummocks built up like trestles, and canted forward 
still five feet and a quarter out of level. Every thing 
else was fairly afloat: even the India-rubber boat, 
which during our troubles had found a resting-place 
on a sound projection of the floe close by us, had to 
be taken in. 

This, I may say, was a fearful position ; but the 
thermometer, at a mean of — 23° and — 24°, soon 
brought back the solid character of our floating raft. 
In less than two days every thing about us was as 
firmly fixed as ever. But the whole topography of the 
ice was changed, and its new configuration attested 
the violence of the elements it had been exposed to. 
Not) ling can be conceived more completely embodying 
inhospitable desolation. From mast-head the eye trav- 
eled wearily over a broad champaigne of undulating 
ice, crowned at its ridges with broken masses, like 
breakers frozen as they rolled toward the beach. Be- 
yond these, you lost by degrees the distinctions of sur- 
face. It was a great plain, blotched by dark, jagged 
shadows, and relieved only here and there by a hill 



ICE COMMOTION. 47l 

of upheaved rubbish. Still further in the distance 
came an unvarying uniformity of shade, cutting v^ith 
saw-toothed edge against a desolate sky. 

Yet there needed no after-survey of the ice-field to 
prove to us what majestic forces had been at work 
upon it. At one time on the 13th, the hummock- 
ridge astern advanced with a steady march upon the 
vessel. Twice it rested, and advanced again — a dense 
wall of ice, thirty feet broad at the base and twelve 
feet high, tumbling huge fragments from its crest, yet 
increasing in mass at each new effort. We had ceased 
to hope ; when a merciful interposition arrested it, so 
close against our counter that there was scarcely room 
for a man to pass between. Half a minute of progress 
more, and it would have buried us all. As we drifted 
along five months afterward, this stupendous memento 
of controlling power was still hanging over our stern. 

We had lost all indications of a shore, and had ob- 
viously passed within the influences of Baffin's Bay. 
We were on the meridian of 75°; yet, though the re- 
cent commotions could be referred to nothing else but 
the conflict of the two currents, we had made very 
little southing, if any, and had seen no bergs. But on 
the 14th the wind edged round a little more to the 
northward, and at six o'clock in the morning of the 
15th we could hear a squeezing noise among the ice- 
fields in that direction. By this time we had become 
learned interpreters of the ice- voices. Of course, we 
renewed our preparations for whatever might be com- 
ing. Every man arranged his knapsack and blanket- 
bag over again with the practiced discretion of an ex- 
pert. Our extra clothing sledge, carefully repacked, 
was made free on deck. The India-rubber boat, only 
useful in this solid waste for crossing occasional chasms, 
was launched out upon the ice for the third time. 



472 THE DOG-STAR. 

The appearances which heralded the sun's return 
had a degree of interest for us which it is not easy to 
express in words. I have referred more than once al- 
ready to the effects of the long-continued night on the 
health of our crowded ship's company. It was even 
more painful to notice its influence on their temper and 
spirits. Among the officers this was less observable. 
Our mess seemed determined, come what might, to 
maintain toward each other that honest courtesy of 
manner, which those who have sailed on long voyages 
together know to be the rarest and most difficult proof 
of mutual respect. There were of course seasons 
when each had his home thoughts, and revolved per- 
haps the growing probabilities that some other Arctic 
search party might seek in vain hereafter for a memo- 
rial of our own ; yet these were never topics of con- 
versation. I do not remember to have been saddened 
by a boding word during all the trials of our cruise. 

With the men, however, it was different. More de- 
ficient in the resources of education, and less restrained 
by conventional usages or the principle of honor from 
communicating to each other what they felt, all sym- 
pathized in the imaginary terrors which each one con- 
jured up. 

We were called up one evening by the deck- watch 
to see for ourselves a " ball of fire floating up and down 
above the ice-field." It was there sure enough, a disk 
of reddish flame, varying a little in its outline, and 
flickering in the horizon like a revolving light at a dis- 
tance. I was at first as much puzzled as the men; 
but glancing at Orion, I soon saw that it was nothing 
else than our old dog-star friend, bright Sirius, come 
back to us. Refraction had raised him above the hills, 
so as to bring him to view a little sooner than we ex- 
pected. His color was rather more lurid than when 



APPROACH OF DAY, 473 

he left us, and the refraction, hesid.es distorting his out- 
line, seemed to have given him the same ohlateness or 
horizontal expansion which we ohserve in the disks 
of the larger planets when nearing the horizon. 

For some days the sun-clouds at the south had heen 
changing their character. Their edges hecame hetter 
defined, their extremities dentated, their color deeper 
as well as warmer; and from the spaces hetween the 
lines of stratus burst out a blaze of glory, typical of the 
longed-for sun. He came at last : it was on the 29th. 
My journal must tell the story of his welcoming, at 
the hazard of its seeming extravagance : I am content 
that they shall criticise it who have drifted for more 
than twelve weeks under the night of a Polar sky. 

^'January 29. Going on deck after breakfast at eight 
this morning, I found the dawning far advanced. The 
whole vault was bedewed with the coming day ; and, 
except Capella, the stars were gone. The southern 
horizon was clear. We were certain to see the sun, 
after an absence of eighty-six days. It had been ar- 
ranged on board that all hands should give him three 
cheers for a greeting ; but I was in no mood to join 
the sallow- visaged party. I took my gun, and walked 
over the ice about a mile away from the ship to a sol- 
itary spot, where a great big hummock almost hem- 
med itie in, opening only to the south. There, Par- 
see fashion, I drank in the rosy light, and watched the 
horns of the crescent extending themselves round to- 
ward the north. There was hardly a breath of wind, 
with the thermometer at only —19°, and it was easy, 
therefore, to keep warm by walking gently up and 
down. I thought over and named aloud every one of 
our little circle, F. and M., T. and P., B. and J., and 
our dear, bright little W. ; wondered a while whether 



474 SUNRISE, NOON, AND SUNSET. 

there were not some more to be remembered, and called 
lip one friend or relative after another, but always came 
back to the circle I began with. 

" Very soon the deep crimson blush, lightening into 
a focus of incandescent white, showed me that the 
hour was close at hand. Mounting upon a crag, I saw 
the crews of our one ship formed in line upon the ice. 
My mind was still tracing the familiar chain of home 
affections, and the chances that this one or the other 
of its links might be broken already. I bethought me 
of the Sortes V irgilianae of my school-boy days : I took 
a piece of candle paper pasteboard, cut it with my 
bowie-knife into a little carbine target, and on one 
side of this marked all our names in pencil, and on the 
other a little star. Presently the sun came: never, 
till the grave-sod or the ice covers me, may I forego 
this blessing of blessings again ! I looked at him 
thankfully with a great globus in my throat. Then 
came the shout from the ship — three shouts — cheering 
the sun. I fixed my little star-target to the floe, walk- 
ed backward till it became nearly invisible ; and then, 
just as the completed orb fluttered upon the horizon, 
fired my ' salut.^ I cut M in half, and knocked the T 
out of Tom. They shall draw lots for it if ever I get 
home ; for many, many years may come and go again 
before the shot of an American rifle signalizes in the 
winter of Baffin's Bay the conjunction of sunrise, noon- 
day, and sunset. 

'^January 30. The crew determined to celebrate *E1 
regresado del sol,' which, according to old Costa, our 
Mahonese seaman, was a more holy day than Christ- 
mas or All-Saints. Mr. Bruce, the diversely talented, 
favored us with a new line of theatrical exhibition, a 
divertissement of domestic composition, * The Country- 



THE PLAY. 475 

man's first Visit to Town ;' followed by a pantomime. 
I copy the play-bill from the original as it was tacked 
against the main-mast : 

ARCTIC THEATRE. 

To be performed, on the night of Thursday, the 30th day of 
January, the Comic Play of the Countryman. After which, a 
Pantojviime. 



To begin with 

A Song ByR. Bruce. 



THE COUNTRYMAN. 

Countryman ..R. Baggs. 

Landlady C. Berry. 

Servant T. Dunning. 

PANTOMIME. 

Harlequin James Johnson. 

Old Man R. Bruce. 

Rejected Lover A. Canot. 

Columbine James Smith. 

Doors to be opened at 8 o'clock. Curtain to rise a quarter past 8 punctually 
No admittance to Children ; and no Ladies admitted without an escort. 

Stage Manager, 

S. BENJAMIN. 

The strictest order will be observed both inside and outside. 



We sat down as usual on the preserved-meat boxes, 
which were placed on deck, ready strapped and beck- 
eted (nautice for trunk-handled) for flinging out upon 
the ice. The afi'air was altogether creditable, how- 
ever, and every body enjoyed it. Here is an outline 
of the pantomime, after the manner of the newspapers. 
An old man (Mr. Bruce) possessed mysterious, semi- 
magical, and wholly comical influence over a rejected 



476 



THE PLAY. 



lover (M. Auguste Canot, ship's cook), and Columbine 
(Mr. Smith) exercised the same over the old man. 
Harlequin (Mr. Johnson), however, by the ^ aid of a 
split-shingle wand and the charms of his " motley 
wear," secures the affections of Columbine, cajoles the 
old man, persecutes the forlorn lover, and carries off 
the prize of love ; the fair Columbine, who had been 
industriously chewing tobacco, and twirling on the 
heel of her boot to keep herself warm, giving him a 
sentimental kiss as she left the stage. A still more 
sentimental song, sung in seal-skin breeks and a ^'nor- 
wester,^^ and a potation all round of hot-spiced rum 
toddy, concluded the entertainments. 

*' It is Washington's birth-day, when * hearts should 
be glad;' but we have no wine for the dinner-table, 
and are too sick for artificial merriment without it. 
Our crew, however, good patriotic wretches, got up a 
theatrical performance, * The Irish Attorney ;' Pierce 
O'Hara taken by the admirable Bruce, our Crichton. 
The ship's thermometer outside was at —46°. Inside, 
among audience and actors, by aid of lungs, lamps, 
and housings, we got as high as 30° below zero, only 
sixty-two below the freezing point! ! probably the low- 
est atmospheric record of a theatrical representation. 

" It was a strange thing altogether. The conden- 
sation was so excessive that we could barely see the 
performers : they walked in a cloud of vapor. Any 
extra vehemence of delivery was accompanied by vol- 
umes of smoke. The hands steamed. When an excit- 
ed Thespian took off his hat, it smoked like a dish of 
potatoes. When he stood expectant, musing a reply, 
the vapor wreathed in little curls from his neck. This 
was thirty degrees lower than the lowest of Parry's 
North Georgian performances. 



THE SCURVY. 477 

r 

The lowest temperature we recorded during the 
cruise was on the 2 2d of this month, when the ship's 
thermometer gave us —46°; my ofFship spirit, — 52° . 

Cold as it was, our mid-day exercise was never in- 
terrupted, unless by wind and drift storms. We felt 
the necessity of active exercise ; and although the ef- 
fort was accompanied with pains in the joints, some- 
times hardly hearahle, we managed, both officers and 
crew, to obtain at least three hours a day. The ex- 
ercise consisted of foot-ball and sliding, followed by 
regular games of romps, leap-frog, and tumbling in 
the snow. By shoveling away near the vessel, we 
obtained a fine bare surface of fresh ice, extremely 
glib and durable. On this we constructed a skating- 
ground and admirable slides. I walked regularly over 
the floes, although the snows were nearly impassable. 

With all this, aided by hosts of hygienic resources, 
feeble certainly, but still the best at my command, 
scurvy advanced steadily. This fearful disease, so 
often warded off when in a direct attack, now exhib- 
ited itself in a cachexy, a depraved condition of sys- 
tem sad to encounter. Pains, diffuse, and non-loca- 
table, were combined with an apathy and lassitude 
which resisted all attempts at healthy excitement. 

These, of course, were not confined to the crew 
alone : out of twenty-four men, but ^ye were without 
ulcerated gums and blotched limbs ; and of these five, 
strange to say, four were cooks and stewards. All the 
officers were assailed. Old pains were renewed, old 
wounds opened ; even old bruises and sprains, received 
at barely-remembered periods back, came to us like 
dreams. 

The close of the month found this state of things on 
the increase, and the strength of the party still waning. 



CHAPTEE XXXIII. 
THE FIRST AMERICAN EXPEDITION. 

(CONTUTCTED.) 

Our brig was still resting on her cradle, and her 
consort on the floe a short distance off, when the first 
month of spring came to greet us. We had passed 
the latitude of 72^. 

To prepare for our closing struggle with the ice- 
fields, or at least divide its hazards, it was determined 
to refit the Rescue. To get at her hull, a pit was 
sunk in the ice around her, large enough for four men 
to work in at a time, and eight feet deep, so as to ex- 
pose her stern, and leave only eighteen inches of the 
keel imbedded. This novel dry-dock answered per- 
fectly. The hull was inspected, and the work of re- 
pair was pressed so assiduously, that in three days the 
stern-post was in its place, and the new bowsprit ready 
for shipping. We had now the chances of two ships 
again in case of disaster. 

The 19th gave us a change of scene. I was aroused 
from my morning sleep by the familiar voice of Mr. 
Murdaugh, as he hurried along the half-deck : " Ice 
opening" — " Open leads off our starboard quarter" — 
" Frost-smoke all around us !" Five minutes after- 
ward, Henri had been summoned from the galley; and, 
carbine in hand, I was tumbling over the hummocks. 



A GALE. 479 

''March 20. Thursday, the 20th of March, opens 
with a gale, a regular gale. On reaching deck after 
breakfast, I found the wind from the southeast, the 
thermometer at zero, and rising. These southeast 
storms are looked upon as having an important influ- 
ence on the ice. They are always warm, and by the 
sea which they excite at the southern margin of the 
pack, have a great effect in breaking the floes. Mr. 
Olrik told me that they were anxiously looked for on 
the Greenland coast as precursors of open water. The 
date of the southeast gale last year, at Uppernavik, 
was April 25th. Our thermometer gave +o^ at noon- 
day, + 7° at one, and +8° at three o'clock!! 

" This is the heaviest storm we have had since en- 
tering Lancaster Sound, exactly seven months and a 
day ago. The snow is whirled in such quantities, 
that our thick felt housing seems as if of gauze: it 
not only covers our decks, but drives into our clothes 
like fine dust or flour. A plated thermometer was in- 
visible fourteen feet from the eye: from the distance 
of ten paces off on our quarter, a white opacity cov- 
ers every thing, the compass-stand, fox-traps, and all 
beyond : the Rescue, of course, is completely hidden. 
This heavy snow-drift exceeds any thing that I had 
conceived, although many of my Arctic English friends 
had discoursed to me eloquently about their perils and 
discomforts. As to facing it in a stationary position, 
nothing human could; for a man would be buried in 
ten minutes. Even in reaching our little Tusculum, 
we tumble up to our middle, in places where a few 
minutes before the very ice was laid bare. The en- 
tire topography of our ice is changing constantly. 

" 7 P.M. ' The wind is howling.' 



480 AN ESCAPE. 

^^ March 23, Sunday. After divine service, started 
for the ice-openings. We are now in the centre of 
an area, which we estimated roughly as four miles 
from north to south, and a little more east and west. 
On reaching what was yesterday's sea-heach, I was 
forced to recant in a measure my convictions as to 
the force of the opposing floes. 

" A new crack was reported at one o'clock, ahout 
the third of a mile from our ship ; and the bearings of 
the sun showed that our brig had, for the first time 
since entering Baffin's Bay, rotated considerably to 
the northward. Here were two subjects for examin- 
ation. So, as soon as dinner was over, I started with 
Davis and Willie, two of my scurvy henchmen, on 
a walk to the openings. Beaching the recent crack, 
we found the ice five feet four inches thick, and the 
black water, in a clear streak a foot wide, running to 
the east and west. I had often read of Esquimaux 
being carried off by the separation of these great floes ; 
but, knowing that our guns could call assistance from 
the brig, we jumped over and hurried on. We were 
well paid. 

" I was tempted to stay too long. The wind sprang 
up suddenly. The floe began to move. I thought of 
the crack between me and the ship, and started off. 
The walking, however, was very heavy, and my scur- 
vy patients stiff in the extensors. By the time I 
reached the crack, it had opened into a chasm, and 
a river as broad as the Wissahiccon ran between me 
and our ship. After some little anxiety — not much 
— 1 saw our captain ordering a party to our relief 
The sledges soon appeared, dragged by a willing par- 
ty ; the India rubber boat was lowered into the lead, 
and the party ferried over. 



FLOATING BEAES. 481 

^^Aj)ril 21, Monday. I have more than common 
cause for thankfulness. A mere accident kept me 
from starting last night to secure our bear. Had I 
done so, I would probably have spared you reading 
more of my journal. The ice over which we traveled 
so carelessly on Saturday has become, by a sudden 
movement, a mass of floating rubbish. 

" In the walk of this morning, which startled me 
with the change, I saw for the first time a seal upon 
the ice. This looks very summer-like. He was not 
accessible^ to our guns. To-day, for the first time too, 
the gulls were flying over the renovated water. Com- 
ing back we saw fresh bear tracks. How wonderful 
is the adaptation which enables a quadruped, to us 
associated inseparably with a land existence, thus to 
inhabit an ice-covered ocean. We are at least eighty 
miles from the nearest land, Cape Kater ; and chan- 
nels innumerable must intervene between us and terra 
firma. Yet this majestic animal, dependent upon his 
own predatory resources alone, and, defying cold as 
well j^s hunger, guided by a superb instinct, confides 
himself to these solitary, unstable ice-fields. 

" There is something very grand about this tawny 
savage; never leaving this utter destitution, this frigid 
inhospitableness — coupling in May, and bringing forth 
in Christmas time — a gestation carried on all of it 
below zero, more than half of it in Arctic darkness — 
living in perpetual snow, and dependent for life upon 
a never-ending activity — using the frozen water as 
a raft to traverse the open seas, that the water un- 
frozen may yield him the means of life. No time 
for hibernation has this Polar tiger: his life is one 
great winter." 



482 



THE BEEAK-UP. 



^^June 5, Thursday. We notice again this morn- 
ing the movement in the trench alongside. The float- 
ing scum of rubbish advances and recedes with a reg- 
ularity that can only be due to some equable undula- 
tion from without to the north. We continue perch- 
ed up, just as we were after our great lift of last De- 
cember. A more careful measurement than we had 
made before, gave us yesterday, between our height 
aft and depression forward, a difference of level of 6 
feet 4 inches. This inclination tells in a length of 
83 feet — about one in thirteen. 

" P.M. The BREAK-UP AT LAST ! A little after five 
this afternoon, Mr. Griffin left us for the Rescue, after 




TOPOQRA.PHY OF THE FLOE, MAY 31. 

A. Advance. B B, Shorter diameter, 3; miloa. 

R. liescue. c C. Longer diameter, b\ miles. 

Distance between the vessels, 500 yards. 



THE RESCUE FREE. 483 

making a short visit. He had hardly gone before I 
heard a hail and its answer, both of them in a tone of 
more excitement than we had been used to for some 
time past ; and the next moment, the cry, * Ice crack- 
ing ahead !' 

" Murdaugh and myself reached the deck just in 
time to see De Haven crossing our gangway. We fol- 
lowed. Imagine our feelings when, midway between 
the two vessels, we saw Griffin with the ice separat- 
ing before him, and at the same instant found a crack 
tracing its way between us, and the water spinning 
up to the surface. * Stick by the floe. Good-by ! 
What news for home?' said he. One jump across 
the chasm, a hearty God - bless - you shake of the 
hand, a long jump back, and a little river divided our 
party. 

" Griffin made his way along one fissure and over 
another. We followed a lead that was open to our 
starboard beam, each man for himself. In half a 
minute or less came the outcry, ' She's breaking out : 
all hands aboard !' and within ten minutes from Grif- 
fin's first hail, while we were yet scrambling into our 
little Ark of Refuge, the whole area about us was di- 
vided by irregular chasms in every direction. 

"All this was at half past five. At six I took a 
bird's-eye sketch from aloft. Many of the fissures were 
already some twenty paces across. Conflicting forces 
were at work every where ; one round-house moving 
here, another in an opposite direction, the two vessels 
parting company. Since the night of our Lancaster 
Sound commotion, months ago, the Rescue had not 
changed her bearing : she was already on our port- 
beam. Every thing was change. 

" Our brig, however, had not yet found an even keel. 



484 



THE ADVANCE. 




BIRD's-EYK view of floe, JUNE 5. 

A. Adrance. D. Floe adhering to the Advance. 

R. Rescue. C. Path between brigs before break-up. 

H H. Hummocks. 

The enormous masses of ice, thrust under her stern by 
the action of repeated pressures, had ghied themselves 
together so completely, that we remained cradled in a 
mass of ice exceeding twenty-five feet in solid depth. 
Many of these tables were liberated by the swell, and 
rose majestically from their recesses, striking the ship, 
and then escaping above the surface for a moment, 
with a sudden vault. 

"To add to the novelty of our situation, two cracks 
coming together obliquely, met a few yards astern of 
us, cleaving through the heavy ice. 



AIT EVEN KEEL. 485 

^^June 8, Sunday. Even keel again!! Once more 
floating ship-fashion, in a ship's element. It was be- 
tween twelve and one o'clock this morning. Mur- 
daugh went down upon the fragment, which was still 
adhering to our starboard side. He had hardly rested 
his weight upon it, when, with certain hurried, scarce- 
ly premonitory grindings, it cleared itself. He had 
barely time to scramble up the brig's side, tearing his 
nails in the effort, before, with crash and turmoil, it 
tumbled up to the surface, letting us down once more 
into clear water. When I reached the deck, I could 
hardly realize the level, horizontal condition of things, 
we have been accustomed to this up and down hill 
work so long. 

" 9 P.M. At 1 o'clock P.M. the wind freshened from 
the northward, enough to make sail. We cast off, and 
renewed the old times process of boring, standing ir- 
regularly among the fragments to the southward and 
eastward. We received some heavy bumps, but kept 
under weigh until 6 P.M., when an impenetrable ice- 
fog caused us to haul up to a heavy floe, to which we 
are now fast by three anchors. We estimate our prog- 
ress at six miles. The Rescue is not visible. 

" From the heavy floe to which we are secured we 
obtained fresh thaived water. This is the first time 
since the 15th of September that I have drunk water 
liquefied without fire. Eight months and twenty-four 
days : think of that, dear strawberry and cream eating 
family ! 

It had been determined by our commander that we 
should refresh at Whale Fish Islands, and then hast- 
en back to Melville Bay, the North Water, Lancaster 
Sound, and Wellington Channel ; and certainly there 
was no one on board who did not enter heart and soul 

29 



486 KRONPRINSEN. 

into the scheme. It was in pursuance of it that we 
were now hending our course to the east. 

The circumstances that surrounded us, the daily in- 
cidents, our destination and purpose, were the same as 
when approaching the Sukkertoppen a year before. 
There were the same majestic fleets of bergs, the same 
leofions of birds of the same varieties, the same anx- 
ious look-out, and rapid conning, and fearless encoun- 
ter of ice-fields. Every thing was unchanged, except 
the glowing confidence of young health at the outset 
of adventure. We had taken our seasoning : the ex- 
perience of a winter's drift had quieted some of our en- 
thusiasm. But we felt, as veterans at the close of a 
campaign, that with recruited strength we should be 
better fitted for the service than ever. All, therefore, 
looked at the well-remembered clifis, that hung over 
Kronprinsen, with the sentiment of men approaching 
home for the time, and its needed welcomes. 

We reached them on the 16th. Mr. Murdaugh, and 
myself, and four men, and three bottles of rum, were 
dispatched to communicate with the shore. As we 
rowed in to the landing-place, the great dikes of in- 
jected syenite stood out red and warm against the 
cold gray gneiss, and the moss gullies met us like fa- 
miliar grass-plots. Esquimaux crowded the rocks, and 
dogs barked, and children yelled. A few lusty pulls, 
and after nine months of drift, and toil, and scurvy, 
we were once more on terra firma. 

God forgive me the revulsion of unthankfulness ! 
I ought to have dilated with gratitude for my lot. 

Winter had been severe. The season lagged. The 
birds had not yet begun to breed. Faces were worn, 
and forms bent. Every body was coughing. In one 
hut, a summer lodge of reindeer and seal skins, was 



AT GODHAVEN. 487 

a dead child. It was many months since I had look- 
ed at a corpse. The poor little thing had been foi 
once washed clean, and looked cheerfully. The fa- 
ther leaned over it weeping", for it was a boy; and 
two little sisters were making lamentation in a most 
natural and savage way. 

I gave the corpse a string of blue beads, and bought 
a pair of seal-skin boots for tw^enty-five cents ; and 
we rowed back to the brig. In a very little while 
we were under sail for Godhaven. 

We were but five days recruiting at Godhaven. 
It was a shorter stay than we had expected; but we 
w^ere all of us too anxious to regain the searching 
ground to complain. We made the most of it, of 
course. We ate inordinately of eider, and codfish, 
and seal, to say nothing of a hideous-looking toad 
fish, a Lepodogaster, that insisted on patronizing our 
pork-baited lines; chewed bitter herbs, too, of every 
sort we could get; drank largely of the smallest of 
small-beer; and danced with the natives, teaching 
them the polka, and learning the pee-oo-too-ka in re- 
turn. But on the 2 2d, by six o'clock in the morning, 
we were working our way again to the north. 

We passed the hills of Disco in review, with their 
terraced summits, simulating the Ghauts of Hindos- 
tan ; the green-stone cliffs round Omenak's Fiord, the 
great dockyard of bergs ; and Cape Cranstoun, around 
which they were clustered like a fleet waiting for con- 
voy. They were of majestic proportions; and as we 
wound our way tortuously among them, one after an- 
other would come into the field of view, like a tem- 
ple set to be the terminus of a vista. At one time 
we had the whole Acropolis looking down upon us in 
silver; at another, our Philadelpia copy of the Par- 



488 'bergs. 

thenon, the monumental Bank of the United States, 
stood out alone. Then, ag-ain, some venerable Cathe- 
dral, with its deep vaults and hoary belfries, would 
spread itself across the sky; or perhaps some wild 
combination of architectural impossibilities. 

We moved so slowly that I had time to sketch sev- 
eral of these dreamy fabrics. The one which is en- 
graved on the opposite page was an irregular quad- 
rangle, projected at the extremity of a series of ice- 
structures, like the promontory that ends an isthmus : 
it was crowned with ramparts turreted by fractures ; 
and at the water-line a great barreled arch went back 
into a cavern, that might have fabled as the haunt of 
sea-kings or smugglers. 

Off Storoe, a white fox (C. lagopus) came to us on 
the loose ice : his legs and the tip of his tail were 
black. He was the first we had seen on the Green- 
land coast. 

He was followed the next day by a party of Esqui- 
maux, who visited us from Proven, dragging their ka- 
yacks and themselves over seven miles of the pack, 
and then paddling merrily on board. For two glasses 
of rum and a sorry ration of salt-pork, they kept turn- 
ing somersets by the dozen, making their egg-shell 
skiffs revolve sideways by a touch of the paddle, and 
hardly disappearing under the water before they were 
heads up again, and at the gangway to swallow their 
reward. 

The inshore ice opened on the thirtieth, and toward 
evening we left the hospitable moorage of our iceberg, 
and made for the low, rounded rocks, which the Hosky 
pointed out to us as the seat of the settlement. The 
boats were out to tow us clear of the floating rubbish, 
as the light and variable winds made their help nee- 



ESQUIMAUX GUESTS. 



489 



essary, and we were slowly approaching our anchor- 
age, when a rough yawl boarded us. She brought a 
pleasant company, Unas the schoolmaster and parish 
priest, Louisa his sister, the gentle Amalia, Louisa's 
cousin, and some others of humbler note. 




The baptismal waters had but superficially regen- 
erated these savages: their deportment, at least, did 
not conform to our nicest canons. For the first ^yo 
minutes, to be sure, the ladies kept their faces close 
covered with their hands, only withdrawing them to 
blow their noses, which they did in the most primi- 
tive and picturesque manner. But their modesty thus 
assured, they felt that it needed no further illustration. 
They volunteered a dance, avowed to us confidential- 
ly that they had educated tastes — Amalia that she 
smoked, Louisa that she tolerated the more enliven- 
ing liquids, and both that their exercise in the open 
air had made a slight refection altogether acceptable. 
Hospitality is the virtue of these wild regions: our 
hard ta«k, and cranberries, and rum were in requisi- 
tion at once. 

It is not for the host to tell tales of his after-dinner 
company. But the truth of history may be satisfied 
without an intimation that our guests paid niggard 



490 PROVEN. 

honors to the jolly god of a milder clime. The veri- 
est prince, of hottle memories, would not have quar- 
reled with their heel-taps. ^ =^ =^ 

AVe were inside the rocky islands of Proven harhor 
as our watches told us that another day had hegun. 
The time was come for parting. The ladies shed a 
few kindly tears as we handed them to the stern- 
seats: their learned kinsman took a recumbent posi- 
tion below the thwarts, which favored a continuance 
of his nap ; and the rest of the party were bestowed 
with seaman-like address — all but one unfortunate 
gentleman, who, having protracted his festive devo- 
tions longer than usual, had resolved not to " go homq 
till morning." 

The case was a difficult one ; but there was no help 
for it. As the sailors passed him to the bottom of the 
boat, and again out upon the beach, he made the air 
vocal with his indignant outcries. The dogs — I have 
told you of the dogs of these settlements, how they 
welcomed our first arrival — joined their music with 
his. The Provenese came chattering out into the 
cold, like chickens startled from their roost. The gov- 
ernor was roused by the uproar. And in the midst 
of it all, our little weather-beaten flotilla ran up the 
first American flag that had been seen in the port of 
Proven. 

The port of Proven is securely sheltered by its mon- 
ster hills. But they can not be said to smile a wel- 
come upon the navigator. 

Summer comes slowly upon Proven. When we 
arrived, the slopes of the hills were heavily patched 
with snow, and the surface, where it showed itself, 
was frozen dry. The water-line was toothed with 
fangs of broken ice, which scraped against the beach 



THE HOUSE OF PROVEN. 491 

as the tides rose and fell; and an iceberg somehow 
or other had found its way into the little port. It 
was a harmless lump, too deep sunk to float into dan- 
gerous nearness; and its spire rose pleasantly, like a 
village church. 

^^ July 3, I am writing in the *Hosky' House of 
Cristiansen. Cristiansen is the Danish governor of 
Proven, and this house of Cristiansen is the House of 
Proven. Its owner is a simple and shrewd old Dane, 
hale and vigorous, thirty-one of whose sixty-four win- 
ters have been spent within the Arctic circle, north of 
70° N. Lord in his lonely region — his four sons and 
^NQ subordinates, oilmen, the only white faces about 
him, except when he visits Uppernavik — the good old 
man has the satisfaction of knowing no superior. His 
habits are three fourths Esquimaux, one eighth Dan- 
ish, and the remainder Provenish, or peculiarly his 
own. His wife is a half-breed, and his family, in lan- 
guage and aspect, completely Esquimaux. 

" When the long, dark winter comes, he exchanges 
books with his friend the priest of Uppernavik. ' The 
Dantz Penning Magazin,' and * The History of the Uni- 
tas Fratrum,' take the place of certain well-thumbed, 
ancient, sentimental novels ; and sometimes the priest 
comes in person to tenant the ' spare room,' which 
makes it very pleasant, * for we talk Danish.' 

'^ Except this spare room, which elsewhere would 
be called the loft of the house, its only apartment is 
the one in which I am. And here eat, and drink, and 
cook, and sleep, and live, not only Cristiansen and all 
his descendants, but his wife's mother, and her chil- 
dren, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who are 
growing up about her. It is fifteen feet broad by six- 
teen long, with just height enough for a grenadier, 



492 THE FAMILY. 

without his cap, to stand erect, and not touch the 
beams. The frame of the house is of Norway pine, 
coated with tar, with its interspaces caulked with moss, 
and small window-panes inserted in a deep casing of 
wood. 

" The most striking decorative feature is a ledge or 
shelf of pine plank, of varying width, which runs round 
three of its sides. Its capacity is wonderful. It is 
the sofa and bed, on which the entire united family 
find room to loll and sleep ; and upon it now are hud- 
dled, besides a navy doctor and his writing board, one 
ink-bottle, sundry articles of food and refreshment, one 
sleeping child, one lot of babies not in the least asleep, 
one canary-bird cage with its exotic and most sorrow- 
ful little prisoner, and an infinite variety of other ar- 
ticles too tedious to mention, comprising seal-skins, 
boots, bottjes, jumpers, glasses, crockery both of kitch- 
en and nursery, coffee-pots, dog-skin socks, canvas pil- 
lows, an eider-down comforter, and a sick bitch with 
a youthful family of whining puppies. 

" Una, the second daughter, has been sick and un- 
der treatment ; and she is now hard at work with her 
sisters, Anna, Sara, and Cristina, on a tribute of grati- 
tude to her doctor. They have been busy all the 
morning whipping and stitching the seal-skins with 
reindeer tendon thread. My present is to be a com- 
plete suit of ladies' apparel, made of the richest seal- 
skin, according to the standard mode of Proven, which 
may always be presumed to be the * latest winter fash- 
ion.' It is a really elegant dress. To some the unmen- 
tionables might savor of mascularity ; but having seen 
something of a more polite society, my feminine asso- 
ciations are not restricted to petticoats. Extremes meet 
in the Esquimaux of Greenland and Amazons of Paris. 



ESQUIMAUX LIFE. 



493 



" The large family is a happy 
one : so small a home could not 
tolerate a quarrelsome mess. The 
sons, the men Cristiansens, brave 




and stalwart fellows, practiced in the kayack, and the 
sledge, and the whale-net, adroit with the harpoon and 
expert with the rifle, are constant at the chase, and 
bring home their spoil, with the honest pride becoming 
good providers of their household. And the women, 
in their nursing, cooking, tailoring, and housekeeping, 
are, I suppose, faithful enough. But what favorable 
impression that the mind gets through other channels 
can contend against the information of the nose ! Or- 
gan of the aristocracy, critic and magister morum of 
all civilization, censor that heeds neither argument nor 
remonstrance — the nose, alas ! it bids me record, that 
to all their possible godliness cleanliness is not super- 
added. 

*' During the short summer of daylight — it is one 
of the many apparent vestiges, among this people, of 
ancient nomadic habits — the whole family gather joy- 



494 ESQUIMAUX LIFE. 

ously in the summer's lodge, a tent of seal or reindeer 
skin, pitched out of doors. Then the room has its an- 
nual ventilation, and its cooking and chamber furni- 
ture are less liable to be confounded. For the winter 
the arrangement is this : on three sides of the room, 
close by the ledge I have spoken of, stand as many 
large pans of porous steatite or serpentine, elevated on 
slight wooden tripods. These, filled with seal-blub- 
ber, and garnished with moss round the edge to serve 
as a wick, unite the functions of chandelier and stove. 
They who quarrel with an ill-trimmed lamp at home 
should be disciplined by one of them. Each boils its 
half-gallon kettle of coffee in twenty minutes, and 
smokes — like a small chimney on fire ; and the three 
burn together. There is no flue, or fire-place, or open- 
ing of escape. 

" On the remaining side of the room stand a valued 
table and three chairs ; and with these, like a buhl 
cabinet or fancy etagere, conspicuous in its modest 
corner, a tub. It is the steeping-tub for curing skins. 
Its contents require active fermentation to fit them for 
their office ; and, to judge from the odor, the process 
had been going on successfully." 

We warped out to sea again on the afternoon of the 
third, with our friend the cooper for pilot ; the entire 
settlement turning out upon the rocks to wish us good- 
by, and remaining there till they looked in the dis- 
tance like a herd of seal. But we found no opening 
in the pack, and came back again to Proven on the 
fourth, not sorry, as the weather was thickening, to 
pass our festival inside the little port. 

Our celebration was of the primitive order. We 
saluted the town with one of the largest balanced 
stones, which we rolled down from the cliff' above ; 



A NIGHT SCENE. 



495 




and made an egg-nogg of eider eggs ; and the men 
had a Hosky hall ; and, in a word, we all did our hest 
to make the day differ from other days — which at- 
tempt failed. Still, God ever bless the fourth! 

The sixth was Sunday, and we attended church in 
the morning at the schoolmaster's. The service con- 
sisted of a long-winded hymn, and a longer winded 
sermon, in the Esquimaux — surely the longest of long- 
winded languages. The congregation were some two 
dozen men and women, not counting our party. 

We put to sea in the afternoon. The weather was 
soft and warm on shore ; hut outside it was perfectly 
delightful : no wind — the streams of ice beyond en- 
forcing a most perfect calm upon the water ; the ther- 
mometer in the sunshine frequently as high as 76°, 
and never sinking below 30° in the shade. I basked 
on deck all night, sleeping in the sun. 

And such a night! I saw the moon at midnight, 
while the sun was slanting along the tinted horizon, 
and duplicated by reflection from the water below it: 
the dark bergs to seaward had outlines of silver ; and 
two wild cataracts on the shore-side were falling from 
ice-backed cliffs twelve hundred feet into the sea. 



496 BRITISH WHALERS. 

July 7. I was awakened from my dreamy sleep to 
receive the visits of a couple of boats that were work- 
ing slowly to us through the floes. An English face — 
two English faces — twelve English faces : what a hap- 
py sight ! We had had no one but ourselves to speak 
our own tongue to for three hundred days, and were 
as glad to listen to it as if we had been serving out 
the time in the penitentiary of silence at Auburn or 
Sing-Sing. Their broad North Briton was music. It 
was not the offensive dialect of the provincial English- 
man, with the affectation of speaking his language 
correctly ; but a strong and manly home-brew of the 
best language in the world for words of sincere and 
hearty good-will. They had to turn up their noses 
at our seal's-liver breakfast ; but, when they heard of 
our winter trials, they stuffed down the seal without 
tasting it. I felt sorry after they were off, that I had 
not taken their names down every one. 

The M^haling vessels to which they returned were 
in the freer water outside the shore stream, the Jane 
O'Boness, Captain John Walker; and the Pacific, Cap- 
tain Patterson. 

The next day, beating hard to windward, we made 
Uppernavik again. The scenery around it was very 
striking, exhibiting some magnificent mural sections 
of gneiss and slates. The entering headland was some 
fifteen hundred feet high. We found all the hills 
patched with snow to the water's edge, where their 
bases are abraded by the moving floes from one year's 
end to another. 

Mr. IMurdaugh and myself visited the town ; that is 
to say, the priest's house, the governor's house, the oil 
house, the school-church house, and sundry native 
huts. The wood-cut at the bottom of page 499 gives 



UPPER NAVIK. 497 

the interior of one of them, in which we superintend- 
ed the manufacture of a dish of coffee. 

We were received by the governor, accompanied by 
an old friend of ours from Proven, a sort of secretary 
there, " plenty-scribe-'em" as he styled himself The 
old gentleman had arrived at two that morning, in a 
whale-boat, with his stalwart sons, after thirty-two 
miles of pulling through the ice against the wind. 
" Keesey ver bod," he said ; " the ice was very bad." 

The governor, superior in tone to Cristiansen, who 
is a self-made man, welcomed us with fine Danish 
good-breeding, and there is no good-breeding better. 
We found him out to be a desperate conservative, fear- 
ful of nothing but change. His house was after the 
fashion of Mr. Moldrop's, of Godhaven, and scrupu- 
lously clean. Coffee was served ; and we had the 
honor of being introduced to three young ladies of the 
half-breed, absolutely with frocks on. I thought I 
could see that one of them had pantalettes of seal-skin 
peeping out from under her skirt, and a wiser critic 
than myself might have said that all their dresses were 
somewhat antique of fashion. But they met us, on 
the other hand, with a lady-like disregard of our own 
outlandish costume ; and though our language was 
somewhat composite in its idiom, for I understand nei- 
ther the Danish nor the Hosky, and they understood 
very little English, we managed to keep up quite an 
animated conversation. It was very pleasant to re- 
lapse in their company for a while, into the manners 
of society at home. 

We saw also the family of Petersen, Penny's dog 
and Esquimaux manager, all neat and pleasing per- 
sons ; the sons, frank, manly fellows, and the eldest 
daughter really quite refined and pretty. But we did 



498 Baffin's islands. 

not remain long. Our Aberdeen friends had transfer- 
red to us a full supply of newspapers which they had 
brought for Penny : so, after prescribing for the gov- 
ernor's child, and receiving a dog-skin jumper for my 
fee, we returned on board to review the annals of the 
outer world for the past year. 

We now pursued our way very smoothly. We had 
delightful weather ; not the best, indeed, for men whose 
errand lay ahead, but still very welcome to those who 
had roughed it of late so severely. Summer was con- 
centrating all its strength and beauty in the long, sun- 
encircled day, 

Both our vessels were carrying home Esquimaux 
dogs. By continued kindness and over-feeding, I suc- 
ceeded in quite changing the nature of ours : both 
Disco and Hosky were on the high road to civilization. 
But those on board the Rescue and the Albert were 
still as wild as jackals : let loose upon the ice, it was 
almost impossible to catch them again. One after- 
noon, a little below the Devil's Thumb, when the dogs 
of the Albert were out on the floe for exercise, a sud- 
den breeze allowed her to work to windward through 
an open lead. One poor dog was left behind. Boats 
were sent out to recover him, and we all tried by voice 
and gesture to coax him toward us. But the half 
savage, though he stood gazing at us wildly when we 
were at a distance, ran skulking and wolf-like as soon 
as we were near. We were forced at last to abandon 
him to his fate. We could see him for hours, a dark 
speck upon the white floe ; and afterward, as far off* 
as the spy-glass served, still with his head raised and 
his body thrown back on his haunches. Worse than 
this ; such was the quiet expanse of ice and water, 
that we heard the poor creature's howling, waxing 




GOOD-BY TO THE PRINCE ALBERT, MELVILLE BAY. 




INTERIOR OF A NATIVE HUT, UPPERNAVIK, 



ESQUIMAUX DOGS. 501 

fainter and fainter, for eight hours after we left the 
ice. 

The training of these animals by the natives is of 
the most ungracious sort. I never heard a kind ac- 
cent from an Esquimaux to his dog. The driver's 
whip of walrus hide, some twenty feet long, a stone 
or a lump of ice skillfully directed, an imprecation 
loud and sharp, made emphatic by the fist or foot, and 
a grudged ration of seal's meat, make up the winter's 
entertainment of an Esquimaux team. In the sum- 
mer the dogs run at large and cater for themselves. 

I remarked that there were comparatively few of 
them at Holsteinherg, and was told a melancholy sto- 
ry to account for it. It seems that the governor, 
and priest, and fisherman keep goats, veritable goats, 
housed in a fire-warmed apartment in winter, and al- 
lowed the rest of the year to crop the grasses of the 
snow valleys. Now the half-tutored, unfed Esqui- 
maux dog would eat a goat, bones, skin, and, for aught 
I know, horns. The diet was too expensive. It be- 
came a grave question, therefore, how to reconcile the 
incompatibilities of dog and goat. The matter was 
settled very summarily. When the green season of 
sunshine and plenty came, the dogs were sent to a 
rocky islet, a sort of St. Helena establishment, about 
a mile from the main, with permission to live by their 
wits ; and the goats remained to browse and grow fat 
at large. The results were tragical. The dogs were 
afflicted with sore famine. Great life battles began ; 
the strong keeping themselves alive by eating the 
weak. By this terrible process of gradual reduction, 
the colony was resolved into some four or five scarred 
veterans, whose nightly combats disturbed even the 
milk drinkers at the settlement. 



502 Iiq- AN ICE-TRAP. 

A few days after the scene I have described, we 
neared our hated landmark of last season, the DeviFs 
Thumb. But here the leads closed ; and our labyrinth 
of bergs attended us still, clogging our way, and wea- 
rying us with their monotony. Our commander had 
but one thought, and we all sympathized in it — how 
could our little squadron regain its position at the 
searching grounds? We had otherwise no lack of 
incidents. There were parhelia, intricate ones, with 
six solar images and eccentric circles of light, one of 
which had its circumference passing through the sun. 
And we had bear hunts now and then of mothers and 
cubs together ; and sometimes we shot at a flock of 
birds. 

But the spirit of the hunt had left us. We were 
close upon the middle of August. Less than four 
weeks remained for us to get rid of this vexatious en- 
tanglement, press on through Lancaster Sound, com- 
plete our explorations in Wellington Channel, and re- 
turn to the open water of the bay. It was before the 
middle of September that we had been frozen in last 
year. And here we were in a perfect ice-trap, unable 
to win an inch of progress. 

We were without the Albert too. As long ago as 
the fifth, her good folks had determined to make south, 
despairing of success in a northward effort; and on the 
eleventh, while we were yet attached to the old land- 
floe, she found her way to an open lead, and disap- 
peared on the thirteenth. We could hardly talk of 
the regrets we all felt at losing them. It seemed to 
me that for days after I could hear their broken- 
hearted little hand-organ grinding '' The Garb of Old 
Gael. 



BEEG FEACTURE. 503 

We perhaps tliouglit of their departure the more, 
because it implied something of uncertainty as to our 
own fate. They had avowedly left us, fearless and 
enterprising as they were, to escape from hazards that 
we were continuing to brave. Mr. Leask, their vet- 
eran ice-master, thought, when he left us, that if we 
followed the northern leads there was almost a cer- 
tainty of our being caught, like the Swan, and the 
York, and a host of others before us. A pleasant neigh- 
borhood, truly ! Here perished the ships of '47. Here 
the North Star was beset in '48 ; hereabout, the year 
before last, the Lady Jane, and the Superior, and the 
Prince of Wales ; and, coming to our own experience 
of last year, here it was, in this very devil's hole, 
that we wore out our three weeks' imprisonment. 

Moreover, the season was more advanced than last 
year's had been. The thermometer, which stood at 
noon in the shade at 54°, sunk in the evening hours 
to 30°. 

^^ August 17, Sunday. The same revolving wall of 
bergs meets us to the west, but the glacier on the other 
side is partially hidden by a new procession inshore. 
While profaning the day by an attempt to sketch these 
sublime monuments of creative power in my drawing- 
book, I was interrupted by a heavy undulation, roll- 
ing under the brig, and passing on to the solid inshore 
floe. It was followed by a number of others, coming 
in quick succession, and breaking up the floe drift in 
every direction. The action continued for some min- 
utes. It must have been caused by some very large 
and probably irregular berg overturning at a distance ; 
but it was without noise, and indeed without premo- 
nition of any sort. The direction of the wave where 

it struck us was from the northwest. Up to this mo- 

30 



504 THE OPENING. 

merit, all the heavy heaving and warping of to-day 
had been without any effect. Now the floes separated 
as if by magic: there was relaxation every where; and 
we made at least two hundred yards before the ice 
closed again. 

" This afternoon, the captain, with Murdaugh and 
myself, walked and climbed over this same ice, to 
make a reconnoissance of the region beyond the bergs. 
By the aid of boat-hooks and some slippery jumping 
we achieved it, and were at last able to climb one of 
the imprisoning bergs, and look from its crest to the 
other side. 

" It was a sermon such as uninspired man has never 
preached. There, there, far down below us, there was 
the open water, stretching wide away to the south ; 
placid and bright, bearing on its glazed surface fleets 
of bergs and rafts of floes, but open water still ; and 
yet further on, the unbroken water-sky. Our little 
brig was under us, the tiny fretwork of her spars traced 
clean and sharp against the arena of ice ; but, thank 
God ! she is nearing the gates of her prison-house. De 
Haven was right. One quarter of a mile ! Now, lads, 
for the warps again ! 

" Midnight. We are out : at ten minutes past eleven 
we shipped our rudder, the first time in three weeks ; 
and made sail, the first time since the 26th of July. 

*'We owe it all tp a relaxation of the floes. The 
wind was from the northward : the bergs that hemmed 
in the loose drift around us yielded a little toward the 
west, and the skreed began to separate. The main- 
brace was spliced ; springs took the place of warps ; 
and the men went gallantly to their work. They 
were as anxious to get out as any of us. 

"At last we reached an opening: two immense 



THE ESCAPE. 505 

bergs, overhanging and ragged ; and down toward the 
water-line, an opening between them like a gateway. 
Shall we pass ? We have seen so many disruptions, 
and capsizings, and accidents of all sorts in this work 
of anchor-planting : sometimes a mere breath brings 
down masses that would bury half a dozen such ves- 
sels as ours ; and these bergs are so water-washed and 
pendulous. Murdaugh waited for the order. De Ha- 
ven gave it ; and, in deep silence, we passed the Gades 
of the Devil's Trap. 

'^ August 19, Tuesday. The Rescue is close astern 
of us : she got through about noon yesterday. Our 
commodore has resolved on an immediate return to 
the United States." 

The game had been played out fairly. Lancaster 
Sound was out of the question ; and for our scurvy- 
riddled crew, a nine months' winter in the ice of 
North Baffin would have been disastrous. 

After our escape from the congregated bergs, we 
sailed to one at a little distance, and filled our water- 
casks. The berg crumbled and fell while we were do- 
ing so, but nobody was hurt ; and in two days more, 
after a closing skirmish with the ice-pack, we headed 
homeward. On the twentieth we made our last sal- 
utation to the Devil's Thumb ; and on the twenty- 
third, in the evening, we were near enough to Upper- 
navik for a little boating party of us to make it a visit. 

With the exception of Kangiartsoak, this is the 
most northern of the Danish settlements. Its latitude 
is 72° 47^, three hundred and seventy miles within the 
Arctic circle. But reaching it, we felt as if we had 
renewed our communication with the world ; for here, 
once in every year, comes the solitary trader from Co- 
penhagen. We had become so familiar with the drear- 
iness of Greenland, that the glaring red gables of the 



506 



THE GOVERNOR S MANSION. 



three houses, and the white curiosity, which stood for 
a steeple ahove the church, were absolutely cheering ; 
and we landed, poor souls ! after our twelve miles' 
row, with hearts as elate as ever frolicked among the 
orange-groves of Brazil or the cocoa-palms of the East- 
ern Pacific. 

Disappointment once more ! The governor had gone 
to Proven ; the Danish ship had gone to Proven ; the 
priest had gone to Proven. But the gentler sex re- 
mained. The governor's lady gave us a kindly wel- 
come, and extended to us all the hospitalities of his 

mansion. 

The mansion was far 
from picturesque. It was 
a square block of heavy 
timber, running into a 
high-peak gable. The 
roof was of tarred can- 
vas, laid over boards; 
the wooden walls coated 
with tar, and painted a glowing red. A little paling, 
white and garden-like, inclosed about ten feet of pre- 
pared soil, covered with heavy glass frames ; under 
which, in spite of the hoar-frost that gathered on them, 
we could detect a few bunches of crucifers, green rad- 
ishes, and turnip-tops. It was the garden, the dis- 
tinctive appendage of the governor's residence. 

Inside the house — it is the type of those at Disco 
and Proven — you pass by a narrow-boarded vestibule 
to a parlor. This parlor, a room of dignified consider- 
ation, is twelve feet long by eleven : beyond it, a door 
opens to display the suite, a second room, the state 
chamber, of the same size. 

The most striking article of furniture is the stove, a 




THE FEAST. 507 

tall, black cylinder, such as I have seen m the Baltic 
cities, standing like a column in the corner : the next, 
a platoon of tobacco-pipes paraded against the wall : 
the next — let me be honest, it was the first — a table, 
with a clean white cloth, and plates, knives, and forks, 
all equally clean. Overhead hang beams as heavy 
as the carlines of a ship's cabin : below is an uncov- 
ered floor of scrupulous polish : the windows are re- 
cessed, glazed in small squares, and opening, door-like, 
behind muslin curtains : the walls canvas, painted, 
and decorated with a few prints altogether remarkable 
for intensity of color. The looking-glass ; I reserve it 
for more special mention. It was not very large, but 
it was the first we had encountered since we came 
into the regions of ice. " To see ourselves as others 
see us" is not always the prayer of an intelligent self- 
love. Sharp-visaged, staring, weather-beaten old men, 
wrinkle-marked, tawny-bearded, haggard-looking: the 
boys of Uppernavik are better bred than the New York- 
ers, or they would have mobbed us. 

The ladies — they were ladies, they knew no superi- 
ors ; they were self-possessed, hospitable ; they wore 
frocks, and they did not laugh at us — the ladies spread 
the meal, coffee, loons' eggs, brown bread, and a wel- 
come. We ate like j ail-birds. At last came the crown- 
ing act of hospitality ; on the bottom of a blue saucer, 
radiating like the spokes of a wheel or the sticks of a 
Delaware's camp-fire, crisp, pale, yet blushing at their 
tips, and crowned each with its little verdant tuft — 
ten radishes ! Talk of the mango of Luzon and the 
mangostine of Borneo, the cherimoya of Peru, the pine 
of Sumatra, the seckel-pear of Schuylkill meadows ; 
but the palate must cease to have a memory before I 
yield a place to any of them alongside the ten radishes 
of Uppernavik. 



508 THE KAYACK. 

On the twenty-fifth we readied tlie Whale-fish 
Islands, and at six in the evening were near enou^-h 
to be towed in by our boats and anchor off Kronprfn- 
sen. Flocks of kayacks hung about our vessel, like 
birds about a floating spar. We thought tliem more 
sprightly and active than the Esquimaux we had been 
among ; but perhaps it is as unfair to judge of the Es- 
quimaux without his kayack as of a sloth off his tree. 
There was a bright boy among them, under ten years 
of age, who could manage a little craft they had built 
for him admirably. 

The common length of the kayack is about eight- 
teen feet, its breadth on deck some twenty-one inches 
and its depth ten inches in the middle, just such as to 
allow its occupant to sit with his feet extended on the 
bottom and his hips below the deck. 

Its frame is light enough to startle all our notions 
of naval construction, and it is covered with nothing 
but tanned seal-hide. Yet in this egg-shell fabric the 
Esquimaux navigator habitually, and fearlessly, and 
successfully too, encounters risks which his more civ- 
ilized rivals in the seal-hunt, the men of New Bedford 




and Stonington, would rightfully shrink from. I am 
not sure that I can make such a description of its pro- 
portions and structure as a ship-builder would under- 
stand ; hut the drawings I annex have been made 
carefully from one of the best models, and maybe re- 
lied on for all t\w iiiformatlon that can be gathered 
Irom them. 



ITS CONSTRUCTION. 



509 




y 



The skeleton consists of three longitudinal strips of 
wood on each side — it would be wrong to call them 
timbers, for they are rarely thicker than a common 
plastering lath — stretching from end to end, and 
shielded at the stem and stern by cutwaters of bone. 
The upper of these, the gunwale, if I may call it so, is 
somewhat stouter than the others. 
The bottom is framed by three sim- 
^ ilar longitudinal strips. These are 
' ' ' ^ ■ ' ^ crossed by other strips or hoops, 

which perform the office of knees and ribs : they are 
placed at a distance of not more than eight to ten 
inches from one another. Wherever the parts of this 
frame-work meet or cross, they are bound together 
with reindeer tendon very artistically. The general 
outline is, I think, given accurately in the sketch on 
the opposite page. 

Over this little basket-work of wood is stretched the 
coating of seal hides, which also covers the deck, very 
neatly sewed with tendon, and firmly glued at the 
edges by a composition of reindeer horn scraped and 
liquefied in oil. A varnish made of the same mate, 
rials is used to protect the whole exterior. 

The pah, or man-hole, as we would term it, is very 




510 



THE IMPLEMENTS, 



nearly in (.he centre of the little vessel, sometimes a 
few inches toward the stern. It is circular or nearly 
so, wide enough to let the kayacker squeeze his hips 
through it, and no more. It has a rim or lip, secured 
upon the gunwale, and rising a couple of inches above 
the deck, so as to permit the navigator to bind it wa- 
ter-tight around his person. Immediately in front of 
him is his as-say4eut, or line stand, surmounted by a 
reel, with the sealing-line snugly coiled about it, and 
revolving on its centre with the slightest touch. He 
has his harpoon and his lances strapped at his side ; 
his rifle, if he owns one, stowed away securely be- 
tween decks. 

Just behind the kayacker rests his bladder-float or 

. °^^- . air-bag, an air-tight sack of 

seal-skin, always kept inflat- 
ed, and fastened to the sealing- 
line. It performs the double 
office of a buoy, and a break 
or drag to retard the motion of the prey after it is 
struck. 

The harpoon, or principal lance (unahk), is also at- 




tached to the sealing-line. It is a most ingenious de- 
vice. The rod or staff" is divided at right angles in 

two pieces, which 
are neatly jointed 
or hinged with ten- 
don strips, but so braced by the manner in which the 
tendon is made to cross and bind in the lashing, that, 
except when the two parts are severed by lateral press- 
ure, they form but a single shaft. The point, gener- 




OF THE KAYACKER. 



511 




ally an arrow-head of 
bone, has a socket to 
receive the end of the 
shaft: it disengages it- 
self readily from its 
place, but still remains fast to the end of the line. 
Thus, when the kayacker has struck his prey, the 
shaft escapes the risk of breaking from a pull against 
the grain by bending at the joint, and the point is 
carried free by the animal as he dives. 

At the right centre of gravity of the harpoon, that 
point, I mean, at which a cudgel-player would grasp 
his staff, a neatly- arranged cestus or holder [noon-sok) 




OUTSIDE OR BACK OF THE NOON-SOK. 



i- 



8 In. 



INSIDE OR SECTION OF THE NOON-SOK. 



fits itself on the shaft. It serves to give the kayacker 
a good grip when casting his weapon, but slides off 
from it, and is left in the hand, at the moment of 
drawing back his arm. The bird javelin (neu-ve-ak), 



the seal lance (ah-gmc-ve-to), and the rude hunting-knife 



{ka-poot), will be easily understood from my sketches. 



In. 



512 THE kayacker: 

The paddle (pa-uh-teet), about which a knowing 
Esquimaux will waste as many words as a sporting 
gentleman upon a double-barreled Manton or a bridle- 
bit of peculiar fancy, is in every respect a beautifully 
considered instrument. It never exceeds seven ieet 
in length. It is double-bladed, and its central por- 
tion, which receives the hands, presents an ellipsoid 
face, well adapted to a secure grasp. The blades are 
four inches in width, and some two feet in length, 
forming very nearly sections of a cone. Their edges 
and tips are carefully guarded from the cutting action 
of the ice by the ivory of the walrus or narwhal. 

Thus constructed and furnished, its seal-skin cover- 
ing renewed every year, the kayack is the life, and 
pastime, and pride of its owner. He carries it on his 
shoulder into the surf, clad in his water-proof seal-skin 
dress, belted close round the neck, his hood firmly set 
above ; wedges himself into the man-hole, unites him- 
self by a lashing to its rim, and paddles off for a frolic 
outside the breakers, or it may be a seal-hunt, or to 
throw his javelin at the eider, or perhaps to carry dis- 
patches to some distant settlement, or to take part in 
a crusade against the reindeer. 

In their long excursions in search of deer, the ka- 
yackers paddle their way to the nearest portage along 
the coast, and shoulder their little skiff till they reach 
the interior lakes. Their dexterity is admirable in the 
use of their weapons. I have seen them spear the eider 
on the wing and the loon as he was diving. Scud- 
ding along at a rate equal to that of a five-oared whale- 
boat, they fling their tiny javelin far ahead, and, with- 
out interrupting their progress, seize it as they pass. 

The authorities of Greenland communicate con- 
stantly with their different posts by means of the ka- 



HIS DEXTERITY. 513 

yack. On these occasions the express consists of two, 
traveling together for assistance and fellowship. They 
are expeditious, and proverbially reliable. They travel 
only during the day. At night they land upon some 
well-remembered solitude ; the kayack is carried up, 
and laid beside the leeward face of some protecting 
rock, and, after a scanty meal, the Hosky seats him- 
self once more in its closely-fitting hole ; then, draw- 
ing over him his water-tight hood, he leans for sup- 
port against the naked stone, and sleeps. One of these 
messengers arrived at Holsteinberg while we were 
there from Fredericshaab, three Imndred and sixty 
miles in ten days ; traveling along a tempestuous coast, 
with varying winds and currents, at a mean rate of 
thirty-six miles a day. 

It is said the expertness of the kayacker increases 
as you proceed south. If the natives of Julianshaab 
and Lichtenfels surpass those of Egedesminde and 
Holsteinberg, their feats are unnecessarily wonderful. 
Here are some of them, not performed as such, but 
illustrating the accomplishments of a well-trained 
man. 

Extending out from an offsetting mountain-ridge to 
the north of Holsteinberg, is a rocky reef or ledge, over 
which the sea breaks heavily, and the currents run 
with perplexing caprice and force. In almost all sorts 
of weather, if there be only light enough to see, the 
kayacks may be met playing about these surf-beaten 
passages, regardless of wind, swell, or tides. When 
our vessel was entering port, we were boarded by a 
kayack pilot. In spite of the heavy seaway, he ap- 
proached fearlessly to the side of the brig, then, pois- 
ing himself on the slope of the waves, he avoided the 
trough, and, passing a running bowline fore and aft 



514 FEATS OF THE KAYACKER. 

over his little craft, man and boat were lifted bodily 
on board. 

Going out to seaward, with a heavy inshore surf 
rolling, is no trifle, even to weli-inanned whale-boats 
The kayacker paddles quietly out toward the break- 
ers. The roaring lip of green water bends roof-like 
over him. Down cowers the pliant man, his right 
shoulder buried in the water, and his hooded head 
bowed upon his breast. An instant and he emerges 
on the outer side with a jutting impulse, shaking the 
water from his mane, and preparing for a fresh en- 
counter. 

The somerset, the " cantrum," as the whalers term 
it, may be seen any hour of the day for a plug of to- 
bacco or a glass of rum. I have seen it with different 
degrees of address ; but one, that Mr. Miiller, the gov- 
ernor of Holsteinberg, told me of, is the perfection of 
dextrous overturning. The kayacker takes a stone, 
as large as he can grasp in his hand, holding the pad- 
dle by the imperfect grip of the thumbs. He whirls 
his hands over his head, upsets his little bark, buries 
it bottom up, and rights himself on the other side, 
still holding the stone. 

But after all, the crowning feat is the every-day 
one of catching the seal. For this the kayack is con- 
structed, and it is here that its wonderful adaptation 
of purpose is best displayed. Without describing the 
admirable astuteness with which he finds and ap- 
proaches his prey, let us suppose the kayacker close 
upon a seal. The line-stand is carefully examined, the 
coil adjusted, the attachments to the body of the boat 
so fixed that the slightest strain will separate them. 
The bladder-float is disengaged, and the harpoon tipped 
with its barb, which forms the extremity of the coil. 



HIS SEAL HUNT. 515 

In an instant the kayacker has thrown his body 
back and sent his weapon home. Whirr ! goes the 
little coil, and the float is bobbing over the water — 
not far, however, for the barb has entered the lungs, 
and the seal must rise for breath. Now the harpoon 
is picked up, its head remaining in the victim ; and 
the kayack comes along. Here is required discretion 
as well as address. The hunter has probably but two 
weapons, a lance and a knife. The latter he can not 
part with, and even the lance brings him to closer 
quarters than the safety of his craft would invite ; for 
the contortions of a large seal thus wounded may tear 
it at some of the seams, and the merest crevice is cer- 
tain destruction. If he has with him the light javelin 
which he uses for spearing birds, he may be tempted 
to employ it now ; but this, I believe, is not altogether 
sportsmanlike. 

This occasional tendency of the ice-raft to float 
across the bay has given rise to some fearful accidents. 
It would be difiicult for fiction to exceed some of 
the stories that are well authenticated of these poor 
nomads. 

Esquimaux who have gone out with kayack or 
sledge have been mourned as dead. Years afterward 
messages have come by the whalers of their safety in 
the unknown regions of the West, and of their adop- 
tion there ; but after trials too fearful to be recounted. 
Some years ago — the year was mentioned, but I have 
forgot it — a couple of Esquimaux, relatives, set out on 
a sledge in quest of seal. The great ice-plain formed 
one continuous sheet from the Greenland shore as far 
as the eye could reach. During the night, one of 
them, awaking from a heavy sleep, found that the wind 
had shifted to the eastward. It was blowing gently, 



516 CONCLUSION. 

and could hardly have been blowing long. They har- 
nessed in their dogs, urged them to their utmost speed, 
and made for the land they had left. Too late ! a 
yawning chasm of open water lay already between. 
A day was lost in frantic despair. It blew a gale, an 
offshore southeaster. The fog rose, the wind still from 
the east: the shore was gone. 

The story is a wild one. They reharnessed the dogs, 
and turned to the west, one hundred and thirty track- 
less miles of ice before them. On the third day the 
dogs gave out : one of the lost men killed his fellow, 
and revived the animals with his flesh. The wretch- 
ed survivor at last reached the North American shore 
about Merchant's Bay. Years afterward, this account 
came over by a circuitous channel to the Greenland 
settlement. He had married a new wife, had a new 
family, a new home, a new country, from which, had 
he desired it never so much, there could be for him 
no return. 

The traditions of all the settlements have tales of 
similar disaster. Yet the Esquimaux are a happy race 
of people, happy so far as content and an elastic tem- 
perament go to make up happiness. 

We left the settlements of Baffin's Bay on the Cth 
of September, 1851, grateful exceedingly to the kind- 
hearted officers of the Danish posts; and after a run of 
some twenty-four days, unmarked by incident, touch- 
ed our native soil again at New York. Our noble 
friend, Henry Grinnell, was the first to welcome us on 
the pier-head. 




HARPOONING SEALS. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

., DR KANE'S SECOND EXPEDITION. 

In the month of December^ 1852, Dr. Kane received 
special orders from the Secretary of the Navy, " to 
conduct an expedition to the Arctic seas, in search of 
Sir John FrankKn." 

This Second Expedition, in the brig " Advance," left 
New York on the 30th day of May, 1853, escorted by 
several steamers; and, passing slowly on to the Nar- 
rows amid salutes and cheers of farewell, cast off from 
the steam-tug and put to sea. 

The party, all told, consisted of eighteen persons : 

Elisha Kent Kane, Commander. Henry Brooks, First Officer. 

Isaac I. Hayes, Surgeon. August Sontag, Astronomer. 

William Morton, James McGary, John W. Wilson, Amos Bengali, 
George Riley, George Stephenson, Christian Ohlsen, George Whipple, 
William Godfrey, Henry Goodfellow, John Blake, Jefferson Baker, Peter 
Scliubert, Thomas Hickey. 

The history of this Expedition was published after 
the return of its surviving members, and at once took 
rank as the most interesting and most fascinating 
work in the catalogue of Arctic literature — an em- 
inence which it to-day enjoys. Although Dr. Kane 
stands in the front rank of Arctic adventurers, his 
equally eminent success as an author is unquestioned. 
The following extracts from "Arctic Explorations" 
can only serve to give the outlines of the expedition, 
and a few of the experiences of the party : 

51*9 



520 DR. Kane's second expedition. 

" We entered the harbor of Fiskernaes on the I st of 
July, amid the clamor of its entire population, assem- 
bled on the rocks to greet us. This place has an en- 
viable reputation for climate and health. Except per- 
haps Hols teinb erg, it is the dry est station upon the 
coast ; and the springs which well through the mosses, 
frequently remain unfrozen throughout the year. 

" We found Mr. Lassen, the superintending official of 
the Danish Company, a hearty, single-minded man, 
fond of his wife, his children, and his pipe. The visit 
of our brig was, of course, an incident to be marked in 
the simple annals of his colony; and, even before I 
had shown him my official letters, from the Court of 
Denmark, he had most hospitably proffered everything 
for our accommodation. 

" Feeling that our dogs would require fresh provis- 
ions, which could hardly be spared from our supplies on 
shij)board, I availed myself of Mr. Lassen's influence 
to obtain an Esquimaux hunter for our party. He 
recommended to me one Hans Christian, a boy of nine- 
teen, as an expert with the kayak and javelin ; and 
after Hans had given me a touch of his quality by 
spearing a bird on the wing, I engaged him. He was 
fat, good-natured, and, except under the excitements 
of the hunt, as stolid and unimpressible as one of our 
own Indians. 

" Bidding good-bye to the governor, whose hospital- 
ity we had shared liberally, we put to sea on Saturday, 
the 10th, l)cating to the northward and westward in 
the teeth of a heavy gale. 

" On the 16 th we passed the promontory of Swarte- 
huk, and were welcomed the next day at Proven by 
my old friend Christiansen, the superintendent, and 
found his family much as I left them three years 




iAfertNiD TO AN ICEBERG. 




PARTING HAWSERS OFF GOODSEND LEDGE. 



DR. KANE's second EXPEDITION. 523 

before. Frederick, liis son, had married a native wo- 
man, and added a smnmer tent, a half-breed boy, and 
a Danish rifle to his stock of valuables. My former 
patient, Anna, had united fortunes with a fatrfaced Es- 
quimaux, and was the mother of a chubby little girl. 
Madame Christiansen, who counted all these and so 
many others as her happy progeny, was hearty and 
warm-hearted as ever. 

^^ August 1. Beset thoroughly with drifting ice, 
small rotten floe-pieces. But for our berg, we would 
now be carried to the south ; as it is, we drift with it, 
to the north and east. 

" 2 A. M. The continued pressure against our berg 
has begun to affect it ; and, like the great floe all 
around us, it has taken up its line of march toward the 
south. At the risk of being entangled, I ordered a light 
line to be carried out to a much larger berg, and, after 
four hours' labor, made fast to it securely. This berg 
is a moving breakwater, and of gigantic proportions : 
it keeps its course steadily toward the north, while the 
loose ice drifts by on each side, leaving a wake of black 
water for a mile behind us. 

"About 10 p. M. the immediate danger was past; 
and, espying a lead to the northeast, we got under 
weigh, and pushed over in spite of the drifting trash. 
The men worked with a will, and we bored through 
the floes in excellent style. 

" On our road we were favored with a gorgeous 
spectacle, which hardly any excitement of peril could 
have made us overlook. The midnight sun came out 
over the northern crest of the great berg, our late 
" fast friend," kindling variously-colored fires on every 
part of its surface, and making the ice around us one 
great resplendency of gem work, blazing carbuncles, 
and rubies and molten gold. 

31 



524 ARCTIC PILLARS OF HERCULES. 

"August 6. Cape Alexander and Cape Isabella, the 
headlands of Smith's Sounds are now in sight ; on 
the right we have an array of cliffs, whose frowning 
grandeur might dignify the entrance to the proudest 
of southern seas. I should say they would average 
from four to five hundred yards in height, with some 
of their precipices eight hundred feet at a single step. 
They have been until now the Arctic pillars of Hercu- 
les ; and they look down on us as if they challenged 
our right to pass. Even the sailors are impressed, as 
we move under their dark shadow. 

"August 20. By Saturday morning it blew a 
perfect hurricane. We had seen it coming, and were 
ready with three good hawsers out ahead, and all 
things snug on board. 

" Still it came on heavier and heavier, and the ice 
began to drive more wildly than I thought I had ever 
seen it. I had just turned in to warm and dry myself 
during a momentary lull, and was stretching myself 
out in my bunk, when I heard the sharp twanging 
snap of a cord. Our six-inch hawser had parted, and 
we were swinging by the two others ; the gale roaring 
like a lion to the southward. 

" Half a minute more, and ' twang, twang ! ' came a 
second report. I knew it was the whale-line by the 
shrillness of the ring. Our noble ten-inch manilla still 
held on. I was hurrying my last sock into its seal- 
skin boot, when McGary came waddling down the 
companion-ladder : — ' Captain Kane, she won't hold 
much longer: it's blowing the devil himself, and I am 
afraid to surge.' 

'■' The manilla cable was proving its excellence when 
I reached the deck ; and the crew, as they gathered 
round me were loud in its praises. We could hear its 



DR. Kane's second expedition. 525 

deep Eolian chant, swelling through all the rattle of 
the running-gear and moaning of the shrouds. It was 
the death-song! The strands gave way, with the 
noise of a shotted gun ; and in the smoke that fol- 
lowed their recoil, we were dragged out by the wild 
ice, at its mercy. 

" But a new enemy came in sight ahead. Directly 
in our way, just beyond the line of floe-ice against 
which we were alternately sliding and thumping, 
was a group of bergs. We had no power to avoid 
them ; and the only question was whether we were to 
be dashed in pieces against them, or whether they 
might not offer us some providential nook of refuge from 
the storm. But, as we neared them, we perceived that 
they were at some distance from the floe-edge, and sep- 
arated from it by an interval of open water. Our 
hopes rose, as the gale drove us toward this passage, 
and into it ; and we were ready to exult, when, from 
some unexplained cause, — probably an eddy of the 
wind against the lofty ice-walls, — we lost our headway. 
Almost at the same moment, we saw that the bergs 
were not at rest ; that with a momentum of their own 
they were bearing down upon the other ice, and that 
it must be our fate to be crushed between the two. 

"Just then, a broad sconce-piece or low water-washed 
berg came driving up from the southward. The 
thought flashed upon me of one of our escapes in Mel- 
ville Bay ; and as the sconce moved rapidly close along- 
side us, McGary managed to plant an anchor on its 
slope, and hold on to it by a whale-line. It was an 
anxious moment. Our noble tow-horse, whiter than 
the pale horse that seemed to be pursuing us, hauled 
us bravely on ; the spray dashing over his windward 
flanks, and his forehead ploughing up the lesser ice, as 



523 RENSSELAER HARBOR. 

if in scorn. The bergs encroached upon us as we ad- 
vanced : our channel narrowed to width of perhaps 
forty feet : we braced the yards to clear the impend- 
ing ice-walls. 

"We passed clear; but it was a close shave, — so 
close that our port quarter-boat would have been 
crushed if we had not taken it in from the davits, — and 
found ourselves under the lee of a berg, in a compara- 
tively open lead. Never did heart-tired men acknowl- 
edge with more gratitude tlieir merciful deliverance 
from a wretched death." 

After forcing a passage for a week longer, with a 
constant repetition of the scenes just described. Dr. 
Kane held a grand council with his officers, and with 
one exception, Henry Brooks, they were in favor of 
returning southward to winter. Not being able to 
take the same view, Dr. Kane announced his intention 
of working towards the northren headland of the bay : 
once there, he would put the brig into winter harbor 
at the first suitable place. In his decision they all 
cheerfully acquiesced. Finally, on the 7th of Sep- 
tember, the " Advance " was anchored in Rensselaer 
Harbor, and by the 10th, was firmly frozen in. "The 
same ice is around her still." 

Preparations for the winter's residence at this place 
were at once commenced ; journeys were made 
towards the interior, and a party of seven men set 
off September 20th, dragging a sledge load of pem- 
mican, to establish the first of a chain of provision de- 
pots along the coast, for the benefit of exploring par- 
ties to be sent out the next spring. On the 10th of 
October, Kane with a dog team, and Blake on skates, 
started off" to look for the absent party, who had not 
returned when expected. 






^^^ 





SYLVIA HEADLAND.- -INSPECTING A HARBOR. 




RENSSELAER HARBOR. 



CAMP ON THE FLOES. 529 

" On the morning of the 15th, about two hours be- 
fore the late sunrise, as I was preparing to chmb a 
berg from w4iich I might have a sight of the road 
ahead, I perceived far off upon the white snow a dark 
object, which not only moved, but altered its shape 
strangely, — now expanding into a long black line, 
now waving, now gathering itself up into a compact 
mass. It was the returning sledge party. They had 
seen our black tent of Kedar, and ferried across to 
seek it. 

" They were most welcome ; for their absence, in the 
fearfully open state of the ice, had filled me with 
apprehensions. We could not distinguish each 
other, as we drew near in the twilight; and my 
first good news of them was when I heard that they 
were singing. On they came, and at last I was able 
to count their voices, one by one. Thank God, seven ! 
Poor John Blake was so breathless with gratulation, 
that I could not get him to blow his signal-horn. We 
gave them, instead, the good old Anglo-Saxon greet- 
ing, '^ three cheers ! " and in a few minutes were among 
them. 

'^ They had camped one night under the lee of some 
large icebergs, and within hearing of the grand artil- 
lery of the glacier. The floe on which their tent was 
pitched was of recent and transparent ice ; and the 
party, too tired to seek a safer asylum, had turned in 
to rest ; when, with a crack like the snap of a gigantic 
whip, the ice opened directly beneath them. This was, 
as nearly as they could estimate the time, at about 
one o'clock in the morning. The darkness was in- 
tense; and the cold, about 10° below zero, was in- 
creased by a wind which blew from the northeast over 
the glacier. They gathered together their tent and 



530 CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES. 

sleeping furs, and lashed them according to the best 
of their ability, upon the sledge. 

^'Repeated intonations warned them that the ice was 
breaking up ; a swell, evidently produced from the av- 
alanches from the glacier, caused the platform on 
which they stood to rock to and fro. 

" November 16. Poor Hans has been sorely home- 
sick. Three days ago he bundled up his clothes and 
took his rifle to bid us all good-bye. It turns out that be- 
sides his mother, there is another one of the softer sex 
at Fiskernaes that the boy's heart is dreaming of He 
looked as wretched as any lover of a milder clime. I 
hope I have treated his nostalgia successfully, by giv- 
ing him first a dose of salts, and secondly, promotion. 
He has now all the dignity of henchman. He har- 
nesses my dogs, builds my traps, and walks with me 
on my ice-tramps; and, except hunting, is excused 
from all other duty. He is really attached to me, and 
as happy as a fat man ought to be. 

"December 15. We have lost the last vestige 
of our mid-day twilight. We cannot see print, and 
hardly paper : the fingers cannot be counted a foot 
from the eyes. Noonday and midnight are alike, and, 
except a vague glimmer on the sky that seems to de- 
fine the hill outline to the south, we have nothing 
to tell us that this Arctic world of ours has a sun. In 
one week more we shall reach the midnight of the 
year, 

"December 26. Our anxieties for old Grim might 
have interfered with almost any thing else ; but they 
could not arrest our celebration of yesterday. Dr. 
Hayes made us a well-studied oration, and Morton a 
capital punch ; add to these a dinner of marled beef, 
— we have two pieces left, for the sun's return and the 



THE RETURNING SUN. 531 

Fourth of July, — and a bumper of champagne all 
round ; and the elements of our frolic are all regis- 
tered. 

" January 20. This morning at five o'clock — ^f or I am 
so afflicted with the insomnium of this eternal night 
that I rise at any time between midnight and noon — 
I went upon deck. It was absolutely dark ; the cold 
not permitting a swinging lamp. There was not a 
glimmer came to me through the ice-crusted window- 
panes of the cabin. While I was feeling my way, half 
puzzled as to the best method of steering clear of 
whatever might be before me, two of my Newfound- 
land dogs put their cold noses against my hand, and 
instantly commenced the most exuberant antics of 
satisfaction. It then occurred to me how very dreary 
and forlorn must these poor animals be, at atmosphere 
of + 10° in-doors and — 50° without, — living in dark- 
ness, howling at an accidental light, as if it reminded 
them of the moon, — and with nothing, either of in- 
stinct or sensation, to tell them of the passing hours, 
or to explain the long-lost daylight. They shall see 
the lanterns more frequently. 

" February 1. We have seen the sun, for some days, 
silvering the ice between the headlands of the bay ; 
and to-day, toward noon, I started out to be the first 
of my party to welcome him back. It was the long- 
est walk and toughest climb that I have had since our 
imprisonment ; and scurvy and general debility have 
made me ' short o' wind.' But I managed to attain 
my object. I saw him once more ; and upon a pro- 
jecting crag nestled in the sunshine. It was like 
bathing in perfumed water. 

"March 13. Since January, we have been working 
at the sledges and other preparations for travel. The 



532 



SUDDEN ALARM 



death of my dogs, the rugged obstacles of the ice, 
and the intense cold have obliged me to reorganize our 
whole equipment. We have had to discard all our 
India-rubber fancy-work: canvas shoe-making, fur- 
socking sewing, carpentering, are all going on ; and 
the cabin, our only fire-warmed apartment, is the 
work-shop, kitchen, parlor, and hall. 

" Not a man now, except Pierre and Morton, is ex- 
empt from scurvy ; and, as I look around upon the pale 
faces and haggard looks of my comrades, I feel that we 
are fighting the battle of life at disadvantage, and that 
an Arctic night and an Arctic day age a man more 
rapidly and harshly than a year anywhere else in all 
this weary world. 

"March 20. I saw the depot party off yesterday. 
They gave the usual three cheers, with three for my- 
self. I gave them the whole of my brother's wed- 
ding cake, and my last two bottles of Port, and they 
pulled the sledge they were harnessed to famously. 
The party were seen by McGary from aloft, at noon to- 
day, moving easily, and about twelve miles from the 
brig. 

" We were at work cheerfully, sewing away at the 
skins of some moccasins by the blaze of our lamps, 
when, toward midnight of the 31st, we heard the noise 
of steps above, and the next minute Sontag, Oh! sen, 
and Petersen came down into the cabin. Their man- 
ner startled me even more than their unexpected ap- 
pearance on board. They were swollen and haggard, 
and hardly able to speak. 

Their story was a fearful one. They had left their 
companions in the ice, risking their own lives to bring 
us the news : Brooks, Baker, Wilson, and Pierre were 
all lying frozen and disabled. Where ? They could 




IN THE TENT. 




PINNACLY BERG. 




THE RESCUE PARTY. 



LOST ON THE FLOES. 535 

not tell : somewhere in among the hummocks to the 
north and east; it was drifting heavily round them 
when they parted. Irish Tom had stayed by to feed 
and care for the others ; but the chances were sorely 
against them. It was in vain to question them further. 
They had evidently traveled a great distance, for they 
were sinking with fatigue and hunger, and could 
hardly be rallied enough to tell us the direction in 
which they had come. 

" My first impulse was to move on the instant with 
an unencumbered party : a rescue, to be effective or 
even hopeful, could not be too prompt. What pressed 
on my mind most was, where the sufferers were to be 
looked for among the drifts. Ohlsen seemed to have 
his faculties rather more at command than his associ- 
ates, and I thought that he might assist us as a guide ; 
but he was sinking with exhaustion, and if he went 
with us we must carry him. 

" There was not a moment to be lost. While some 
were still busy with the new-comers, and getting ready 
a hasty meal, others were rigging out the " Little Wil- 
lie " with a buffalo-cover, a small tent, and a package of 
pemmican ; and, as soon as we could hurry through 
our arrangements, Ohlsen was strapped on in a fur 
bag, his legs wrapped in dog-skins and eider-down, and 
we went off upon the ice. Our party consisted of 
nine men and myself We carried only the clothes 
on our backs. 

" A well-known peculiar tower of ice, called by the 
men the " Pinnacly Berg," served as our first landmark: 
other icebergs of collossal size, which stretched in long 
beaded lines across the bay, helped to guide us after- 
ward ; and it was not until we had traveled for sixteen 
hours that we began to lose our way. 



536 THE RESCUE PARTY. 

" Pushing ahead of the pnrtj, and clambering over 
some rugged ice-piles, I came to a long level floe, which 
I thought might probably have attracted the eyes of 
weary men in circumstances like our own. It was a 
light conjecture, but it was enough to turn the scale, 
for there was no other to balance it. I gave orders to 
abandon the sledge, and disperse in search of foot- 
marks. We raised our tent, placed our pemmican in 
cache, except a small allowance for each man to carry 
on his person; and poor Ohlsen, now just able to keep 
his legs, was liberated from his bag. The thermome- 
ter had fallen by this time to — 49°.3, and the wind 
was setting in sharply from the northwest. It was 
out of the question to halt : it required brisk exer- 
cise to keep us from freezing. I could not even melt 
ice for water ; and, at these temperatures, any resort 
to snow for the purpose of allaying thirst was fol- 
lowed by bloody lips and tongue : it burnt like 
caustic. 

" It was indispensable then that we should move on, 
lookino; out for traces as we went. Yet when the men 
were ordered to spread themselves, so as to multiply 
the chances, though they all obeyed heartily, some 
painful impress of solitary danger, or perhaps it may 
have been the varying configuration of the ice-field, 
kept them closing up continually into a single group. 
The strange manner in which some of us were affected 
I now attribute as much to shattered nerves as to the 
direct influence of the cold. Men like McGary and 
Bonsall, who had stood out our severest marches, were 
seized with trembling fits and short breath ; and, in 
spite of all my efforts to keep up an example of sound 
bearing, I fainted twice on the snow. 

"We had been nearly eighteen hours out without 



THE WAND ERERS FOUND. 537 

water or food, when a new hope cheered us. I think 
it was Hans, our Esquimaux hunter, who thought he 
saw a broad sledge-track. The drift had nearly 
effaced it, and we were some of us doubtful at first 
whether it was not one of those accidental rifts 
which the gales make in the surface snow. But, as 
we traced it on to the deep snow among the hum- 
mocks, we were led to footsteps ; and, following these 
with religious care, we at last came in sight of a small 
American flag fluttering from a hummock, and lower 
down a little Masonic banner hanging from a tent- 
pole hardly above the drift. It was the camp of our 
disabled comrades : we reached it after an unbroken 
march of twenty-one hours. 

" The little tent was nearly coTered. I was not among 
the first ta come up ; but^ when I reached the tent-cur- 
tain, the men were standing in silent file on each side 
of it. With more kindness and delicacy of feeling 
than is often supposed to belong to sailors, but which 
is almost characteristic, they intimated their wish that 
I should go in alone. As I crawled in, and, coming 
upon the darkness, heard before me the burst of welcome 
gladness that came from the four poor fellows stretched 
on their backs, and then for the first time the cheer 
outside, my weakness and my gratitude together al- 
most overcame me. " They had expected me : they 
were sure I would come ! " 

'^ We were now fifteen souls ; the thermometer sev- 
enty-five degrees below the freezing point ; and our 
sole accommodation a tent barely able to contain eight 
persons: more than half our party were obliged to 
keep from freezing by walking outside while the oth- 
ers slept. We could not halt long. Each of us took 
a turn of two hours' sleep ; and we prepared for our 
homeward march. 



538 PERILS OF THE RETURN. 

"We took with us nothing but the tent, furs to pro- 
tect the rescued party, and food for a journey of fifty 
hours. Everything else was abandoned. Two large 
buffalo-bags, each made of four skins, were doubled 
up, so as to form a sort of sack, lined on each side by 
fur, closed at the bottom but opened at the top. This 
was laid on the sledge ; the tent, smoothly folded, 
serving as a floor. The sick with their limbs sewed 
up carefully in reindeer-skins were placed upon the 
bed of buffalo-robes, in a half-reclining posture ; other 
skins and blanket-bags were thrown above them ; and 
the whole litter was lashed together so as to allow but 
a single opening opposite the mouth for breathing. 

" This necessary work cost us a great deal of time and 
effort ; but it was essential to the lives of the suffer- 
ers. It took us no less than four hours to strip and 
refresh them, and then to enable them in the manner 
I have described. It was completed at last, however; 
all hands stood round ; and after repeating a short 
prayer, we set out on our retreat. 

" And 3^et our march for the first six hours was very 
cheering. We made by vigorous pulls and lifts nearly 
a mile an hour, and reached the new floes before we 
were absolutely weary. Our sledge sustained the 
trial admirably. Ohlsen, restored by hope, walked 
steadily at the leading belt of the sledge-lines ; and I 
began to feel certain of reaching our half-way station 
of the day ])efore, where we had left our tent. But 
we were still nine miles from it, when, almost without 
premonition, we all became aware of an alarming fail- 
ure of our energies. 

" Bonsall and Morton, two of our stoutest men, came 
to me, begging permission to sleep : " they were not 
cold : the wind did not enter them now : a little sleep 



MEN GIVING OUT. 539 

was all they wanted." Presently Plans was found 
nearly stiff under a drift ; and Thomas, bolt upright, 
had his eyes closed, and could hardly articulate. At 
last, John Blake threw himself on the snow, and re- 
fused to rise. They did not complain of feeling cold ; 
but it was in vain that I wrestled, boxed, ran, argued, 
jeered, or reprimanded : an immediate halt could not 
be avoided. 

" We pitched our tent with much difficulty. Our 
hands were too powerless to strike a fire : we were 
obliged to do without water or food. Even the spirits 
(whisky) had frozen at the men's feet, under all 
the coverings. We put Bonsall, Ohlsen, Thomas, and 
Hans, with the other sick men, well inside the tent, and 
crowded in as many others as we could. Then, leav- 
ing the party in charge of Mr. McGrary, with orders to 
come on after four hours' rest, I pushed ahead with 
William Godfrey, who volunteered to be my compan- 
ion. My aim was to reach the halfway tent, and thaw 
some ice and pemmican before the others arrived. 

" The floe was of level ice, and the walking excellent. 
I cannot tell how long it took us to make the nine 
miles ; for we were in a strange sort of stupor, and 
had little apprehension of time. It was probably 
about four hours. We kept ourselves awake by im- 
posing on each other a continued articulation of words; 
they must have been incoherent enough. I recall 
these hours as among the most wretched I have ever 
gone through : we were neither of us in our right 
senses, and retained a very confused recollection of 
w^hat preceded our arrival at the tent. We both of 
us, however, remember a bear, who walked leisurely 
before us and tore up as he went a jumper that Mr. 
McGary had improvidently thrown off the day before. 



540 A BIYOUAC. 

He tore it into shreds and rolled it into a ball, but 
never offered to interfere with our progress. I remem- 
ber this, and with it a confused sentiment that our tent 
and buffalo-robes might probably share the same fate. 
Godfrey, with whom the memory of this day's work 
may atone for many faults of later time, had a better 
eye than myself; and, looking some miles ahead, he 
could see that our tent was undergoing the same un- 
ceremonious treatment. I thought I saw it too, but 
we were so drunken with cold that we strode on 
steadily, and, for aught I know, without quickening 
our pace. 

'^Probably our approach saved the contents of the 
tent; for when w^e reached it the tent was uninjured, 
though the bear had overturned it, tossing the buffalo- 
robes and pemmican into the snow ; we missed only a 
couple of blanket-bags. What we recollect, however, 
and perhaps all we recollect, is, that we had great 
difficulty in raising it. We crawled into our reindeer 
sleeping-bags, without speaking, and for the next 
three hours slept on in a dreamy but intense slum- 
ber. 

" We were able to melt water and get some soup 
cooked before the rest of our party arrived ; it took 
them but five hours to walk the nine miles. They 
were doing well, and considering the circumstances, in 
wonderful spirits. The day was most providentially 
windless, with a clear sun. All enjoyed the refresh- 
ment we had got ready : the crippled were repacked 
in their robes ; and we sped briskly toward the hum- 
mock ridges which lay between us and the Pinnacly 
Berg. 

"Our halts multiplied and we fell half-sleeping on 
the snow. I could not prevent it. Strange to say, it re- 



RELIEF FROM THE BRIG. 541 

freshed us. I ventured upon the experiment myself, 
making Kile j wake me at the end of three minutes ; 
and I felt so much benefited by it that I timed the 
men in the same way. They sat on the runners of 
the sledge^ fell asleep instantly, and were forced to 
wakefulness when their three minutes were out. 

" By eight in the evening we emerged from the floes. 
The sight of the Pinnacly Berg revived us. Brandy, 
an invaluable resource in emergency, had already been 
served out in tablespoonful doses. "We now took a 
longer rest, and a last but stouter dram, and reached 
the brig at 1 p. m., we believe without a halt. 

'^ I say we believe ; and here perhaps is the most de- 
cided proof of our sufferings : we were quite delirious, 
and had ceased to entertain a sane apprehension of 
the circumstances about us. We moved on like men 
in a dream. Our footmarks seen afterward showed 
that we had steered a bee-line for the brig. It must 
have been by a sort of instinct, for it left no impress 
on the memory. Bonsall was sent staggering ahead, 
and reached the brig, God knows how, for he had 
fallen repeatedly at the track-lines ; but he delivered 
with punctilious accuracy the messages I had sent by 
him to Dr. Hayes. 

Petersen and Whipple came out to meet us about 
two miles from the brig. They brought my dog-team, 
with the restoratives I had sent for by Bonsall. I do 
not remember their coming. Dr. Hayes entered with 
judicious energy upon the treatment our condition 
called for, administering morphine freely, after the 
usual frictions next. Mr. Ohlsen suffered some time 
from strabismus and blindness : two others underwent 
amputation of part of the foot, without unpleasant con- 
sequences 5 and two died in spite of all our efforts. 



542 ESQUIMAUX VISITORS. 

" We were watcliing in the morning at Baker's death- 
bedj when one of our deck-watch, who had been cut- 
ting ice for the melter, came hurrying down into the 
cabin with the report, " People halloing ashore ! " I 
went up, followed by as many as could mount the 
gangway ; and there they were, on all sides of our 
rocky harbor, dotting the snow-shores and emerging 
from the blackness of the cliffs, — wild and uncouth but 
evidently human beings. 

"As we gathered on the deck, they rose upon the 
more elevated fragments of the land-ice, standing 
singly and conspicuously like the figures in a tableau 
of the opera, and distributing themselves around al- 
most in a half-circle. They were vociferating as if to 
attract our attention, or perhaps only to give vent to 
their surprise ; but I could make nothing out of their 
cries, except " Hoah, ha ha ! " and " Ka, kaah ! ha> 
kaah ! " repeated over and over again. 

" There was light enough for me to see that they 
brandished no weapons, and were only tossing their 
heads and arms about in violent gesticulations. A 
more unexcited inspection showed us, too, that their 
numbers were not as great nor their size as Patago- 
nian as some of us had been disposed to fancy at first. 
In a word, I was satisfied that they were natives of the 
country ; and calling Petersen from his bunk to be my 
interpreter, I proceeded, unarmed and waving my 
open hands, toward a stout figure who made him- 
self conspicuous and seemed to have a greater number 
near him than the rest. He evidently understood the 
movement, for he at once, like a brave fellow, leaped 
down upon the floe and advanced to meet me fully 
half-way. 

" He was nearly a head taller than myself, extremely 




LOADING THE FAITH. 




FIRST MEKTINU WITH KSQUIMAUX. 



INTEUYIEW WITH METEK. 545 

powerful and well-built, with swarthy complexion and 
piercing black eyes. His dress was a hooded capote 
or jumper of mixed white and blue fox-pelts, arranged 
with something of fancy, and booted trousers of white 
bear-skin, which at the end of the foot were made to 
terminate with the claws of the animal. 

"Although this was the first time he had ever seen a 
white man, he went with me fearlessly; his compan- 
ions staying behind on the ice. Hickey took them 
out what he esteemed our greatest delicacies, — slices 
of good wheat bread, and corned pork, with exorbitant 
lumps of white sugar ; but they refused to touch them. 
They had evidently no apprehension of open violence 
from us. I found afterward that several among them 
were singly a match for the white bear and the walrus, 
and that they thought us a very pale-faced crew. 

"Being satisfied with my interview in the cabin, I 
sent out word th. i the rest might be admitted to the 
ship ; and, although they, of course, could not know 
how their chief had been dealt with, some nine or ten 
of them followed with boisterous readiness upon the 
bidding. Others in the mean time, as if disposed to 
give us their company for the full time of a visit, 
brought up from behind the land-ice as many as fifty- 
six fine dogs, with their sledges, and secured them 
within two hundred feet of the brig, driving their 
lances into the ice, and picketing the dogs to them by 
the seal-skin traces. The sledges were made up of 
small fragments of porous bone, admirably knit to- 
gether by thongs of hide ; the runners, which glistened 
like burnished steel, were of highly-polished ivory, 
obtained from the tusks of the walrus. The only arms 
they carried were knives, concealed in their boots ; 
but their lances, which were lashed to the sledges, 
were quite a formidable weapon. 

32 



546 DEATH OF BAKER. 

" In the morning they were anxious to go ; but I had 
given orders to detain them for a parting interview 
with myself. It resulted in a treaty^ brief in its terms, 
that it might certainly be remembered, and mutually 
beneficial, that it might possibly be kept. I tried to 
make them understand what a powerful Prospero they 
had had for a host, and how beneficent he would prove 
himself so long as they did his bidding. And as an 
earnest of my favor, I bought all the walrus-meat they 
had to spare, and four of their dogs, enriching them 
in return with needles and beads and a treasure of old 
cask-staves. 

" In the fullness of their gratitude, they pledged 
themselves emphatically to return in a few days with 
more meat, and to allow me to use their dogs and sledges 
for my excursions to the north. I then gave them 
leave to go. They yoked in their dogs in less than 
two minutes, got on their sledgeei, cracked their two- 
fathom-and-a-half-long seal-skin whip, and were off 
down the ice to the southwest at a rate of seven knots 
an hour. 

"May 28, Sunday. Our day of rest and devotion. 
It was a fortnight ago last Friday since our poor friend 
Pierre died. For nearly two months he had been strug- 
gling against the enemy with a resolute will and 
mirthful spirit, that seemed sure of victory. But he 
sunk in spite of them. 

"The last offices were rendered to him with the 
same careful ceremonial that we observed at Baker s 
funeral. There were fewer to walk in the procession ; 
but the body was encased in a decent pine coffin and 
carried to Observatory Island, where it was placed 
side-by-sidc with that of his messmate. Neither could 
yet be buried ; but it is hardly necessary to say that 



RETURN OF DR. HAYES. 547 

the frost has embalmed their remains. Dr. Hayes read 
the chapter from Job which has consigned so many to 
their last resting-place, and a little snow was sprinkled 
upon the face of the coffin. Pierre was a volunteer not 
only of our general expedition, but of the party wdth 
which he met his death-blow. He was a gallant man, 
a universal favorite on board, always singing some 
Beranger ballad or other, and so elastic in his merri- 
ment that even in his last sickness he cheered all that 
were about him." 

"May 30. It is a year ago to-day since we left 
New York. I am not as sanguine as I was then: time 
and experience have chastened me. There is every 
thing about me to check enthusiasm and moderate 
hope. I am here in forced inaction, a broken-down 
man, oppressed by cares, with many dangers before 
me, and still under the shadow of a hard wearing win- 
ter, which has crushed two of my best associates. 

" My mind never realizes the complete catastrophe, 
the destruction of all Franklin's crews. I picture them 
to myself broken into detachments, and my mind fixes 
itself on one little group of some thirty, who have 
found the open spot of some tidal eddy, and under the 
teachings of some Esquimaux or perhaps one of their 
own Greenland whalers, have set bravely to work, and 
trapped the fox, speared the bear, and killed the seal 
and walrus and whale. I think of them ever with 
hope. I sicken not to be able to reach them. 

" June 1, Thursday. At ten o'clock this morning 
the wail of the dogs outside announced the return of 
Dr. Hayes and William Godfrey. Both of them were 
completely snow-blind, and the doctor had to be led to 
my bedside to make his report. 

"June 27. McGary and Bonsall are back with 



548 ADVTlNTUilE WITH A BEAR. 

Hickey and Riley. They arrived last evening: all 
well, except that the snow has effected their eye-sight 
badly, owing to the scorbutic condition of their sys- 
tems. Mr. McGary is entirely blind, and I fear will 
be found slow to cure. They have done admirably. 
They bring back a continued series of observations, 
perfectly well kept up, for the further authentication 
of our survey. 

" This is evidently the season when the bears are 
in most abundance. Their tracks were everywhere, 
both on shore and upon the floes. One of them had 
the audacity to attempt intruding itself upon the 
party during one of their halts upon the ice ; and Bon- 
sall tells a good story of the manner in which they re- 
ceived and returned his salutation, but without in any 
degree disturbing the unwelcome visitor ; specially 
unwelcome at that time and place, for all the guns 
had been left on the sledge, a little distance off, and 
there was not so much as a Avalking-pole inside. There 
was of course something of natural confusion in the 
little council of war. The first impulse was to make 
a rush for the arms ; but this was soon decided to be 
very doubtfully practicable, if at all, for the bear, 
having satisfied himself with his observations of the 
exterior, now presented himself at the tentropening. 
Sundry volleys of lucifer matches and some im- 
promptu torches of newspapers were fired without 
alarming him, and, after a little while, he planted him- 
self at the doorway and began making his supj)er 
upon the carcass of a seal Avhicli had been shot the 
day before. 

" Tom Ilickey was the iirst to bethink him of the 
military device of a sortie from the postern, and, cut- 
ting a hole with his knife, crawled out at the rear of 




TENT ON THE FLOES. 




THE BEAR IN CAMP. 




GATHERING MOSS. 



ADYENTURES OF MORTON AND HANS. 551 

the tent. Here lie extricated a boai>hook, that formed 
one of the supporters of the ridge-pole, and made it 
the instrument of a right valorous attack. A blow 
well administered on the nose caused the animal to 
retreat for the moment a few paces, beyond the sledge, 
and Tom, calculating his distance nicely, sprang for- 
ward, seized a rifle, and fell back in safety upon his 
comrades. In a few seconds more, Mr. Bonsall had 
sent a ball through and through the body of his en- 
emy. 

" It was with no slight joy that on the evening of the 
10th of July, while walking with Mr. Bonsall, a dis- 
tant sound of dogs caught my ear. These faithful 
servants generally bayed their full-mouthed welcome 
from afar off, but they always dashed in with a wild 
speed which made their outcry a direct precursor of 
their arrival. Not so these well-worn travelers. Hans 
and Morton staggered beside the limping dogs, and 
poor Jenny was riding as a passenger upon the sledge. 

'' They left the brig on the 3d of June, and reached 
the Great Glacier on the 15th, after only twelve days 
of travel. They showed great judgment in passing 
the bays ; and, although impeded by the heavy snows, 
would have been able to remain much longer in the 
field, but for the destruction of our provision-depots 
by the bears. 

'' As Morton, leaving Hans and his dogs, passed be- 
tween Sir John Franklin Island and the narrow beach- 
line, the coast became more wall-like, and dark masses 
of porphyritic rock abutted into the sea. With grow- 
ing difficulty, he managed to climb from rock to rock, 
in hopes of doubling the promontory and sighting the 
coast beyond, but the water kept encroaching more 
and more on his track. 



552 THE OPEN SEA. 

'^ It must have been an imposing sight, as he stood at 
this termination of his journey, looking out upon the 
great waste of waters before him. Not a " speck of 
ice," to use his own words, could be seen. There, from a 
height of five hundred and eighty feet, which com- 
manded a horizon of almost forty miles, his ears were 
gladdened with the novel music of dashing waves; 
and a surf, breaking in among the rocks at his feet, 
stayed his further progress. 

" Beyond this cape all is surmise. The high ridges 
to the northwest dwindled off into low blue knobs, 
which blended finally with the air. Morton called 
the cape, which baffled his labors, after his command- 
er ; but I have given it the more enduring name of 
Cape Constitution. 

"All the sledge-parties were now once more aboard 
ship, and the season of Arctic travel has ended. For 
more than ten months we had been imprisoned in ice, 
and throughout all that period, except during the en- 
forced holiday of the midwinter darkness or while 
repairing from actual disaster, had been constantly in 
the field. The summer was wearing on, but still the 
ice did not break up as it should. As far as we could 
see, it remained inflexibly solid between us and the 
North Water of Baffin's Bay. 

" The alternative of abandoning the vessel at this 
early stage of our absence, even were it possible, 
would, I feel, be dishonoring ; but, revolving the ques- 
tion as one of practicability alone, I would not under- 
take it. In the first place how are we to get along 
with our sick and newly-amputated men ? It is a 
dreary distance at the best to Upernavik of Beechy 
Island, our only seats of refuge, and a precarious trav- 
erse if we were all of us fit for moving ; but we are 




MORTON AND HANS ENTERING THE CHANNEL. 




MORTON AND HANS LEAVING KENNEDY CHANNEL. 



ATTEMPT TO REACH BEECHY ISLAND. 555 

hardly one-half in efficiency of what we count in 
number. Besides, how can I desert the brig while 
there is still a chance of saving her ? There is no use 
of noting ^ro3 and cons : my mind is made up ; I will 
not do it." 

About the middle of July, Dr. Kane, with ^yq^ vol- 
unteers, started southward hoping to be able to reach 
Beechy Island, and to communicate with some one of 
the English ships searching for Franklin. The trip was 
made in a boat which was dragged to the water, and 
was exciting and dangerous. On the 31st of July, 
when within ten miles of Cape Parry, they were stop- 
ped by a solid mass of ice which lay directly across 
their path. On climbing an iceberg they found that 
all within a radius of thirty miles was an impenetrable 
sea of ice. Further attempts to proceed being useless, 
they returned to the brig, halting at Northumberland 
and Littleton Islands, where they feasted on auks and 
scurvy grass. 

Littleton Island will ever be a locality of great in- 
terest, as the last harbor of the Polaris was on the 
the main land opposite, and the place where her crew, 
after a long residence, started southward in June, 1873. 

"August 18. Eeduced our allowance of wood to 
six pounds a meal. This, among eighteen mouths, is 
one-third of a pound of fuel for each. It allows us 
coffee twice a day, and soup once. Our fare besides 
this is cold pork boiled in quantity and eaten as re- 
quired. This sort of thing works badly; but I must 
save coal for other emergencies. I see ^darkness 
ahead.' 

" August 20, Sunday. Rest for all hands. The 
daily prayer is no longer ^ Lord accept our gratitude 
and bless our undertaking,' but ^Lord accept our 



556 SIGNAL CAIRN. 

gratitude and restore us to our homes.' The ice 
shows no change: after a boat and foot journey 
around the entire southeastern curve of the bay, no 
signs ! 

" I determined to place upon Observatory Island a 
large signal-beacon or cairn, and to bury under it doc- 
uments which, in case of disaster to our party, would 
convey to any who might seek us intelligence 
of our proceedings and our fate. The memory of the 
first winter quarters of Sir John Franklin, and the 
painful feelings with which, while standing by the 
graves of his dead, I had four years before sought for 
written signs pointing to the fate of the living, made 
me careful to avoid a similar neglect. 

"A conspicuous spot was selected upon a cliiF looking 
out upon the icy desert, and on a broad face of rock 
the words 

A. D. 1853-54, 

were painted in letters which could be read at a dis- 
tance. A pyramid of heavy stones, perched above it, 
was marked with the Christian symbol of the cross. 
It was not without a holier sentiment than that of 
mere utility that I placed under this the coffins of our 
two poor comrades. It was our beacon and their 
gravestone. 

" Near this a hole was worked into the rock, and a 
paper, enclosed in glass, sealed in with melted lead. 

" It read as follows : — 

"Brig Advance, August 14, 1854. 

"E. K. Kane, with his comrades, Henry Brooks^ 
John Wall Wilson, James McGary, I. I. Hayes^ Chris- 



THE RECORD, 557 

tian Ohlsen, Amos Bonsall, Henry Goodfellow, August 
Son tag, William Morton, J. Carl Petersen, George 
Stephenson, Jefferson Temple Baker, George Riley, 
Peter Schubert, George Whipple, John Blake, Thomas 
Hickey, William Godfrey, and Hans Christian, mem- 
bers of the Second Grinnell Expedition in search of 
Sir John Franklin and the missing crews of the Erebus 
and Terror, were forced into this harbor while endeav- 
oring to bore the ice to the north and east. 

" They were frozen in on the 8th of September, 
1853, and liberated 

" During this period the labors of the expedition 
have delineated nine hundred and sixty miles of coast- 
line, without developing any traces of the missing ships 
or the slightest information bearing upon their fate. 
The amount of travel to effect this exploration ex- 
ceeded two thousand miles, all of which was upon foot 
or by the aid of dogs. 

"Greenland has been traced to its northern face, 
whence it is connected with the farther north of the 
opposite coast by a great glacier. This coast has been 
charted as high as lat. 82° 21'. Smith's Sound ex- 
pands into a capacious bay: it has been surveyed 
throughout its entire extent. From its northern and 
eastern corner, in lat. 80° 10', long. 60°, a channel has 
been discovered and followed until farther progress 
was checked bv water free from ice. This channel 
trended nearly due north, and expanded into an appa- 
rently open sea, which abounded with birds and bears 
and marine life. 

"The death of the dogs during the winter threw 
the travel essential to the above discoveries upon the 
personal efforts of the officers and men. The sum- 
mer finds them much broken in health and strength. 



558 THE COUNCIL. 

"Jefferson Temple Baker, and Peter Schubert died 
from injuries received from cold while in manly per- 
formance of their duty. Their remains are deposited 
under a cairn at the north point of Observatory 
Island. 

" The site of the observatory is seventy-six English 
feet from the northernmost salient point of this island, 
in a direction S. 14° E. Its position is in lat. 78° 37' 10", 
long. 70° 40'. The mean tidal level is twenty-nine 
feet below the highest point upon this island. Both 
of these sites are further designated by copper bolts 
sealed with melted lead into holes upon the rocks. 

" On the 12 th of August, 1854, the brig warped from 
her position, and, after passing inside the group of 
islands, fastened to the outer floe about a mile to the 
northwest, where she is now awaiting further changes 
in the ice. 

" Signed, 

" E. K. Kane, 

" Commanding Expedition. 
"Fox-Trap Point, August 14, 1854." 

" August 24. At noon to-day I had all hands called, 
and explained to them frankly the considerations 
which have determined me to remain where we are. 
I endeavored to show them that an escape to open 
water could not succeed, and that the effort must be 
exceedingly hazardous : I alluded to our duties to the 
ship : in a word, I advised them strenuously to forego the 
project. I then told them that I should freely give my 
permission to such as were desirous of making the at- 
tempt, but that I should require them to place them- 
selves under the command of officers selected by them 
before setting out, and to renounce in writing all 



PORTION OF CREW START SOUTH. 559 

claims upon myself and the rest who were resolved 
to stay by the vessel. Having done this, I directed 
the roll to be called, and each man to answer for him- 
self 

" In the result, eight out of the seventeen survivors 
of my party resolved to stand by the brig. It is just 
that I should record their names. They were Henry 
Brooks, James McGary, J. W. Wilson, Henry Goodfel- 
low, William Morton, Christian Ohlsen, Thomas Hick- 
ey, Hans Christian. 

" I divided to the others their portion of our re- 
sources justly and e\^en liberally; and they left us on 
Monday, the 28th, with every appliance our narrow 
circumstances could furnish to speed and guard them. 
One of them, George Riley, returned a few days af- 
terward ; but weary months went by before we saw 
the rest again. They carried with them a written as- 
surance of a brother's welcome should they be driven 
back ; and this assurance was redeemed when hard 
trials had prepared them to share again our fortunes. 

" The party moved off with the elastic step of men 
confident in their purpose, and were out of sight in a 
few hours. As we lost them among the hummocks, the 
stern realities of our condition pressed themselves upon 
us anew. The reduced numbers of our party, the help- 
lessness of many, the waning efficiency of all, the im- 
pending winter with its cold, dark night, our penury 
of resources, the dreary sense of increased isolation, — ■ 
these made the staple of our thoughts. For a time, 
Sir John Franklin and his party, our daily topic 
through so many months, gave place to the question 
of our own fortunes, — how we were to escape, how to 
live. The summer had gone, the harvest was ended, 
and We did not care to finish the sentence. 



560 THE ARREST. 

" When the three visitors came to us near the end of 
August, I estabhshed them in a tent below deck, with 
a copper lamp, a cooking-basin, and a liberal supply of 
slush for fuel. I left them under guard when I went 
to bed at two in the morning, contentedly eating and 
cooking and eating again without the promise of an in- 
termission. An American or an European would have 
slept after such a debauch till the recognized hour for 
hock and seltzer-water. But our guests managed to elude 
the officer of the deck and escape unsearched. They 
repaid my liberality by stealing not only the lamp, 
boiler, and cooking-pot they had used for the feast, but 
Nannook also, my best dog. If the rest of my team 
had not been worn down by over-travel, no doubt they 
would have taken them all. Besides this, we discov- 
ered the next morning that they had found the buffa- 
lo-robes and Indian-rubber cloth which McGary had 
left a few days before on the ice-foot near Six-mile 
Kavine, and had added the whole to the spoils of their 
visit. 

" I was puzzled how to inflict punishment, but saw 
that I must act vigorously, even at a venture. I des- 
patched my two best walkers, Morton and Riley, as 
soon as I heard of the theft of the stores, with orders 
to make all speed to Anoatok, and overtake the thieves, 
who, I thought, would probably halt there to rest. 
They found young Myouk making himself quite com- 
fortable in the hut, in company with Sievu, the wife of 
Metek, and Aningna, the wife of Marsinga^ and my 
buffalo-robes already tailored into kapetahs on their 
backs. 

" A continued search of the premises recovered the 
cooking-utensils, and a number of other things of 
greater or less value that we had not missed from the 




KENNEDY CHANNEL. 




VIEW FROM CAPE CONSTITUTION. 



THE PUNISHMENT. 563 

brig. With the prompt ceremonial which outraged 
law delights in among the officials of the police every- 
where, the women were stripped and tied ; and then, 
laden with their stolen goods and as much walrus-beef 
besides from their own stores as would pay for their 
board, they were marched on the instant back to the 
brig. 

" The thirty miles was a hard walk for them ; but 
they did not complain, nor did their constabulary 
guardians, who had marched thirty miles already to 
apprehend them. It was hardly twenty-four hours 
since they left the brig with their booty before they 
were prisoners in the hold, with a dreadful white man 
for keeper, who never addressed to them a word that 
had not all the terrors of an unintelhgible reproof, 
and whose scowl, I flatter myself, exhibited a well-ar- 
ranged variety of menacing and demoniacal expres- 
sions. 

" They had not even the companionship of Myouk, 
Him I had despatched to Metek, ' head-man of Etah, 
and others," with the message of a melo-dramatic ty- 
rant, to negotiate for their ransom. For five long 
days the women had to sigh and sing and cry in soli- 
tary converse, — their appetite continuing excellent, it 
should be remarked, though mourning the while a 
rightfully-impending doom. At last the great Metek 
arrived. He brought with him Ootuniah, another man 
of elevated social position, and quite a sledge-load of 
knives, tin cups, and other stolen goods, refuse of 
wood and scraps of iron, the sinful prizes of many 
covetings. 

" I may pass over our peace conferences and the in- 
direct advantages which T of course derived from hav- 
ing the opposing powers represented in my own cap- 



564 THE TREATY. 

ital. But the splendors of out Arctic centre of civil- 
ization, with its wonders of art and science, — our " fire- 
death " ordnance included, — could not all of them im- 
press Metek so much as the intimations he had re- 
ceived of our superior physical endowments. 

"The protocol was arranged without difficulty, 
though not without the accustomed number of ad- 
journments for festivity and repose. It abounded in 
protestations of power, fearlessness, and good-will by 
each of the contracting parties, which meant as much 
as such protestations usually do on both sides the 
Arctic circle. 

'^ On the part of the Inuit, the Esquimaux, they 
were after this fashion : — 

"^ We promise that we will not steal. "We promise 
we will bring you fresh meat. We promise we will 
sell or lend you dogs. We will keep you company 
whenever you want us, and show you where to find 
the game." 

" On the part of the Kahlunah, the white men, the 
stipulation was this ample equivalent : — 

" ^ We promise that we will not visit you w^ith death 
or sorcery, nor do you any hurt or mischief whatsoev- 
er. We will shoot for you on our hunts. You shall 
be made welcome aboard ship. We will give you 
presents of needles, pins, two kinds of knife, a hoop, 
three bits of hard wood, some fat, an awl, and some 
sewing-thread ; and we will trade with you of these 
and every thing else you want for walrus and seal- 
meat of the first quality." 

" And the closing formula might have read, if the 
Esquimaux political system had included reading 
among its qualifications for diplomacy, in this time- 
consecrated and, in civilized regions, veracious assur- 
ance : — 



OUR WILD ALLIES. 565 

" ^ We, the high contracting parties pledge ourselves 
now and forever brothers and friends.' 

" This treaty — which, though I have spoken of it 
jocosely, was really an affair of much interest to us — 
was ratified with Hans and Morton as my accredited 
representatives, by a full assembly of the people at 
Etah. All our future intercourse was conducted by it. 
It was not solemnized by any oath ; but it was never 
broken. We went to and fro between the villages 
and the brig, paid our visits of courtesy and necessity 
on both sides, met each other in hunting parties on 
the floe and the ice-foot, organized a general community 
of interests, and really, I believe, established some 
personal attachments deserving of the name. As long 
as we remained prisoners of the ice, we were indebted 
to them for invaluable counsel in relation to our hunt- 
ing expeditions ; and in the joint hunt we shared alike, 
according to their own laws. Our dogs were in one 
sense common property ; and often have they robbed 
themselves to offer supplies of food to our starving teams. 
They gave us supplies of meat at critical periods : we 
were able to do as much for them. They learned to 
look on us only as benefactors ; and, I know, mourned 
our departure bitterly. 

" September 22. I am off for the walrus-grounds 
with our wild allies. It will be my sixth trip. I know 
the country and its landmarks now as well as any of 
them, and can name every rock and chasm and wa- 
tercourse, in night or fog, just as I could the familiar 
spots about the dear Old Mills where I passed my 
childhood. 

"September 29. I returned last night from Anoa- 
tok, after a journey of much risk an exposure, that I 
should have avoided but for the insuperable obstinacy 
of our savage friends. 



566 HUNTING EXCURSION WITH MYOUK. 

^' I set out for the walrus grounds at noon, by the 
track of the ' Wind Point ' of Anoatok, known to us as 
Esquimaux Point. I took the light sledge, and, in ad- 
dition to the five of my available team, harnessed in 
two animals belonging to the Esquimaux. Ootuniah, 
Myouk, and the dark stranger accompanied me, with 
Morton and Hans. 

" At about 1 p. M., we had lost the land, and, while 
driving the dogs rapidly, all of us running alongside of 
them, we took a wrong direction, and traveled out 
toward the floating ice of the Sound. AVe had to 
keep moving, for we could not camp in the gale, that 
blew around us so fiercely that we could scarcely hold 
down the sledge. But we moved with caution, feeling 
our way with the tent-poles, which I distributed 
among the party for the purpose. A murmur had 
reached my ear for some time in the cadences of the 
storm, steadier and deeper, I thought, than the tone 
of the wind : on a sudden it struck me that 1 heard 
the noise of waves, and that we must be coming close 
on the open water. I had hardly time for the hurried 
order, ' Turn the dogs,' before a wreath of wet frost- 
smoke swept over us, and the sea showed itself, with a 
great fringe of foam, hardly a quarter of a mile ahead. 
We could now guess our position and its dangers. The 
ice was breaking up before the storm, and it was not 
certain that even a direct retreat in the face of the 
gale would extricate us. 

" It was pitchy dark. I persuaded Ootuniah, the 
eldest of the Esquimaux, to have a tent-pole lashed 
horizontally across his shoulders. I gave him the end 
of a line, which I had fastened at the other end round 
my waist. The rest of the party followed him. At 
last one after another succeeded in chimb oring after 
me upon the ice-foot, driving the dogs before tliem. 




ESQUIMAUX HUT. 





WILD DOG TEAM. 



AN ESQUIMAUX HOMESTEAD. 5.69 

« Providence had been our guide. The shore on 
which we landed was Anoatok, not four hundred yards 
from the familiar Esquimaux homestead. With a 
shout of joy, each man in his own dialect, we hastened 
to the ' wind-loved spot ;' and in less than an hour, our 
lamps burning cheerfully, we were discussing a famous 
stew of walrus-steaks, none the less relished for an 
unbroken ice-walk of forty-eight miles and twenty 
haltless hours. 

'^ Time had done its w^ork on the igloe of Anbatok, 
as among the palatial structures of more southern 
deserts. The entire front of the dome had fallen in, 
closing up the tossut, and forcing us to enter at the 
solitary window above it. The breach was large 
enough to admit a sledge team; but our Arctic 
comrades showed no anxiety to close it up. Their 
clothes saturated with the freezing water of the fioes, 
these iron men gathered themselves round the blub- 
ber-fire and steamed away in apparent comfort. The 
only departure from their practised routine, which the 
bleak night and open roof seemed to suggest to them, 
was that they did not strip themselves naked before 
coming into the hut, and hang up their vestments in 
the air to dry, like a votive offering to the god of the 
sea. 

^ The chant and the feed and the ceremony all com- 
pleted, Hans, Morton, and myself crawled feet-foremost 
into our buffalo-bag, and Ootuniah, Awahtok, and My- 
ouk flung themselves outside the skin between us. 
The last I heard of them or anything else was the re- 
newed ch< Tus of ' Nalegak ! nalegak ! nalegak-soak ! ' 
mingling itself sleepily in my dreams with school-boy 
memories of Aristophanes and The Frogs. I slept 

eleven hours. 

33 



5T0 A BEAR-FIGHT. 

" October 7. Lively sensation, as they say in the 
land of olives, and champagne. ^ Nannook, nannook I' 
— 'A bear, a bear! ' — Hans and Morton in a breath ! 

"To the scandal of our domestic regulations, the 
guns were all impracticable. While the men were load- 
ing and capping anew, I seized my pillow-companion 
six-shooter, and ran on deck. A medium-sized bear, 
with a four months' cub, was in active warfare with 
our dogs. They were hanging on her skirts, and she 
with wonderful alertness was picking out one victim 
after another, snatching him by the nape of the neck, 
and flinging him many feet or rather yards, by a 
barely perceptible movement of her head. 

" Tudla, our master dog, was already hors de combat : 
he had been tossed twice. Jenny, just as I emerged 
from the hatch, was making an extraordinary somer- 
set of some eight fathoms, and alighted senseless. 
Old Whitey, stanch, but not bear-wise, had been the 
first in the battle : he was yelping in helplessness on 
the snow. 

" It seemed as if the controversy was adjourned and 
Nannook evidently thought so ; for she turned off to 
our beef-barrels, and began in the most unconcerned 
manner to turn them over and nose out their fatness. 

"October 11. There is no need of looking at the 
thermometer and comparing registers, to show how 
far this season has advanced beyond its fellow of last 
year. The ice-foot is more easily read, and quite as 
certain. 

" The under part of it is covered now with long sta- 
lactitic columns of ice, unlike the ordinary icicle in 
shape, for they have the characteristic bulge of the 
carbonate-of-lime stalactite. They look like the fan- 
tastic columns lianirinfr from the roof of a frozen tern- 



awahtok's hut. 571 

pie, the dark recess behind them giving all the effect 
of a grotto. There is one that brings back to me 
saddened memories of Elephanta and the merry 
friends that bore me company under its rock-chiselled 
portico. The fig-trees and the palms, and the gallant 
major's curries and his old India ale, are wanting in 
the picture. Sometimes again it is a canopy fringed 
with gems in the moonlight. Nothing can be purer or 
more beautiful. 

^^ Morton reached the huts beyond Anoatok upon 
the fourth day after leaving the brig. There were 
four huts ; but two of them are in ruins. They were 
all of them the homes of families only four winters 
ago. Of the two which are still habitable, Myouk, 
his father, mother, brother, and sister occupied one • 
and Awahtok and Ootuniah, with their wives and three 
young ones the other. 

"It was evident from the meagreness of the larder 
that the hunters of the family had work to do ; and from 
some signs which did not escape the sagacity of Morton 
it was plain that Myouk and his father had determined 
to seek their next dinner upon the floes. They were 
going upon a walrus-hunt ; and Morton, true to the 
mission with which I had charged him, invited himself 
and Hans to be of the party. 

"I have not yet described one of these exciting inci- 
dents of Esquimaux life. Morton was full of the one 
he witnessed; and his account of it when he came 
back was so graphic that I should be glad to escape 
from the egotism of personal narrative by giving it in 
his own language.'' 



CHAPTEE XXXV. 

DR. KANE'S SECOND EXPEDITION. 

(continued.) 

My narrative has reached a period at which every 
thing like progress was suspended. The increasing 
cold and brightening stars, the labors and anxieties 
and sickness that pressed upon us, — these almost en- 
gross the pages of my journal. Now and then I find 
some marvel of Petersen's about the fox's dexterity as 
a hunter ; and Hans tells me of domestic life in South 
Greenland, or of a seal-hunt and a wrecked kayack ; 
or perhaps McGary repeats his thrice-told tale of hu- 
mor ; but the night has closed down upon us, and we 
are hibernating through it. 

" Yet some of these were topics of interest. The 
intense beauty of the Arctic firmament can hardly be 
imagined. It looked close above our heads, with its 
stars magnified in glory and the very planets twink- 
ling so much as to baffle the observations of our astron- 
omer. I am afraid to speak of some of these night- 
scenes. I have trodden the deck and the floes, when 
the life of earth seemed suspended, its movements, its 
sounds, its coloring, its companionships; and as I 
looked un the radiant hemisphere, circling above me 
as if rendering worship to the unseen Center of light, 
I have ejaculated in humility of spirit, ' Lord, what is 
man that thou art mindful of him ?' And then I have 

572 




ARCTIC MOONLIGHT. 




m\\ mmwn 

THK ICE-FOOT CANOPY. 



THE CABIN BY NIGHT. 575 

tlioiiglit of the kindly world we had left, with its re- 
volving sunshine and shadow, and the other stars that 
gladden it in their changes, and the hearts that warmed 
to us there ; till I lost myself in memories of those 
who are not ] — and they bore me back to the stars 
again. 

"- December 1. I am writing at midnight. I have 
the watch from eight to two. It is day in the moon- 
light on deck, the thermometer getting up again to 
36° below zero. As I came down to the cabin — for 
so we still call this little moss-lined igloe of ours — 
every one is asleep, snoring, gritting his teeth, or talk- 
ing in his dreams. This is pathognomonic ; it tells of 
Arctic winter and its companion, scurvy. 

" I was asleep in the forenoon of the *7th, after the 
fatigue of an extra night-watch, when I was called to 
the deck by the report of ' Esquimaux sledges.' They 
came on rapidly, ^yq sledges, with teams of six dogs 
each, most of the drivers strangers to us ; and in a 
few minutes were at the brig. Their errand was of 
charity : they were bringing back to us Bonsall and 
Petersen, two of the party that left us on the 28th of 
August. 

" The party had many adventures and much suffer- 
ing to tell of They had verified by painful and per- 
ilous experience all I had anticipated for them. But 
the most stirring of their announcements was the con- 
dition they had left their associates in, two hundred 
miles off, divided in their counsels, their energies bro- 
ken, and their provisions nearly gone. I reserve for 
another page the history of their wanderings. My 
first thought was of the means of rescuing and reliev- 
ing them. 

" I resolved to despatch the Esquimaux escort at once 



576 RETURN OF WITHDRAWING PARTY. 

with such supplies as our miserably-imperfect stores 
allowed, they giving their pledge to carry them with 
all speed, and, what I felt to be much less certain, with 
all honesty. "We cleaned and boiled and packed a 
hundred pounds of pork, and sewed up smaller pack- 
ages of meat-biscuit, bread-dust, and tea; and des- 
patched the whole, some three hundred and fifty 
pounds, by the returning convoy. Of our own party 
— those who had remained with the brig — McGary, 
Hans, and myself were the only ones able to move, 
and of these McGary was now fairly on the sick list. 
We could not be absent a single day without jeopard- 
ing the lives of the rest. 

^' December 12th, Tuesday. Brooks awoke me at 
three this morning with the cry of ' Esquimaux again !' 
I dressed hastily, and, groping my way over the pile 
of boxes that leads up from the hold into the darkness 
above, made out a group of human figures, masked 
by the hooded jumpers of the natives. They stopped 
at the gangway, and, as I was about to challenge, one 
of them sprang forward and grasped my hand. It 
was Doctor Hayes. A few words, dictated by suffer- 
ing, certainly not by any anxiety as to his reception, 
and at his bidding the whole party came upon deck. 
Poor fellows ! I could only grasp their hands and give 
them a brother s welcome. 

" The thermometer was at minus 60° ; they were 
covered with rime and snow, and were fainting with 
hunger. It was necessary to use caution in taking 
them below ; for, after an exposure of such fearful in- 
tensity and duration as they had gone through, the 
warmth of the cabin would have prostrated them com- 
pletely. They had journeyed three hundred and fifty 
miles; and their last run from the bay near Etah, 



CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES. 577 

some seventy miles in a right line, was through the 
hummocks at this appalling temperature. 

" One by one they all came in and were housed. 
Poor fellows ! as they threw open their Esquimaux gar- 
ments by the stove, how they relished the scanty 
luxuries which we had to offer them ! The coffee and 
the meat-biscuit soup, and the molasses and the wheat 
bread, even the salt pork which our scurvy forbade 
the rest of us to touch, — how they relished it all ! For 
more than two months they had lived on frozen seal 
and walrus-meat. 

'- 1 cannot crowd the details of their journey into my 
diary. I have noted some of them from Dr. Hayes's 
words ; but he has promised me a written report, and 
1 wait for it. It was providential that they did not 
stop for Petersen's return or rely on the engagements 
which his Esquimaux attendants had made to them as 
well as to us. The sledges that carried our relief 
of provisions passed through the Etah settlement 
on some furtive project, we know not what. 

"- December 25, Christmas. All together again, the 
returned and the steadfast, we sat down to our Christ- 
mas dinner. There was more love than with the 
stalled ox of former times ; but of herbs none. We 
forgot our discomforts in the blessings that adhered 
to us still ; and when we thought of the long road 
ahead of us, we thought of it hopefully. I pledged 
myself to give them their next Christmas with their 
homes ; and each of us drank his ^ absent friends ' with 
ferocious zeal over one-eighteenth part of a bottle of 
sillery — the last of its hamper, and, alas ! no longer 
mousseiix. 

"December 26. The moon is nearly above the 
cliffs ; the thermometer — 57° to — 45°, the mean oi 



578 ATTEMPT TO REACH THE ESQUIMAUX. 

the past four days. In the midst of this cheering con- 
junction, I have ahead of me a journey of a hundred 
miles, to say nothing of the return. Worse than this, 
I have no landmarks to guide me, and must be my 
own pioneer. It is a merciful change of conditions 
that I am the strongest now of the whole party, as 
last winter I was the weakest. The duty of collect- 
ing food is on me. 

" December 28. The moon to-morrow will be for 
twelve hours above the horizon, and so nearly circum- 
polar afterward as to justify me in the attempt to 
reach the Esquimaux hunting-ground about Cape Al- 
exander. Every thing is ready ; and, God willing, I 
start to-morrow, and pass the four-hours' dog-halt in 
the untenanted hut of Anoatok. Then we have, as 
it may be, a fifteen, eighteen, or twenty hours' march? 
run and drive, before we reach a shelter among the 
heathen of the Bay. 

" January 22. Busy preparing for a trip to the 
lower Esquimaux settlement. The barometer remains 
at the extraordinary height of 3 0*8 5, — a bad prelude 
to a journey ! 

"January 29. The dogs carried us to the lower 
curves of the reach before breaking down. I was just 
beginning to hope for an easy voyage, when Toodla 
and the Big Yellow gave way nearly together; the 
latter frightfully contorted by convulsions. There was 
no remedy for it: the nK)on went down, and the 
wretched night was upon us. We groped along the 
ice-foot, and, after fourteen hours' painful walking, 
reached the old hut. 

" A dark water-sky extended in a wedge from Lit- 
tleton to a point north of the cape. Everywhere else 
the fu mamcnt was obscured by mist. The height of 




THE BRIG IN HER WIxXTER CRADLE. 




APPROACHING THE DESERTED HUT. 




THE OPEN WATER. 



THE HUT IN A STORM. 581 

the barometer continued as we left it at the brig, and 
our own sensations of warmth convinced us that we 
were about to have a snow-storm. 

^' We hardly expected to meet the Esquimaux here, 
and were not disappointed. Hans set to work at once 
to out out blocks of snow to close up the entrance to 
the hut. I carried in our blubber-lamp, food, and bed- 
ding, unharnessed the dogs, and took them into the 
same shelter. We were barely housed before the 
storm broke upon us. 

" Here, completely excluded from the knowledge of 
things without, we spent many miserable hours. We 
could keep no note of time, and, except by the whir- 
ring of the drift against the roof of our kennel, had 
no information of the state of the weather. We slept, 
and cooked coffee, and drank coffee, and slept, and 
cooked coffee, and drank again ; and w^hen by our tired 
instincts we thought twelve hours must have passed, 
we treated ourselves to a meal, — that is to say, we di- 
vided impartial bites out of the raw hind-leg of a fox to 
give zest to our biscuits spread with frozen tallow. 
We then turned in to sleep again, no longer heedful 
of the storm, for it had now buried us deep in with 
the snow. 

" In the morning — that is to say, when the com- 
bined light of the noonday dawn and the circum- 
polar moon permitted our escape — I found, by com- 
paring the time as indicated by the Great Bear with 
the present increased altitude of the moon, that we 
had been pent up nearly two days. Under these cir- 
cumstances we made directly for the hummocks, en 
route for the bay. But here was a disastrous change. 
The snow had accumulated under the windward sides 
of the inclined tables to a hight so excessive that we 



582 HANS DISCOURAGED. 

buried sledge, dogs, and drivers, in the effort to work 
through. It was all in vain that Hans and I har- 
nessed ourselves to, or lifted, levered, twisted, and 
pulled. Utterly exhausted and sick, I was obliged to 
give it up. The darkness closed in again, and with 
difficulty we regained the igloe. 

" The ensuing night brought a return to hard freez- 
ing temperatures. Our luxurious and downy coverlet 
was a stiff, clotted lump of ice. In spite of our double 
lamp, it was a miserable halt. Our provisions grew 
short ; the snow kept on falling, and we had still forty- 
six miles between us and the Esquimaux. 

" I determined to try the land-ice by Fog Inlet ; 
and we worked four hours upon this without a breath- 
ing-spell, — utterly in vain. My poor Esquimaux, 
Hans, adventurous and buoyant as he was, began to 
cry like a child. Sick, worn out, strength gone, dogs 
fast and floundering, I am not ashamed to admit that 
as I thought of the sick men on board, my own equa- 
nimity also was at fault. 

" We had not been able to get the dogs out, when 
the big moon appeared above the water-smoke. A 
familiar hill, ' Old Beacon Knob,' was near. I scram- 
bled to its top and reconnoitered the coast around it. 
The ridge about Cape Hatherton seemed to jut out of 
a perfect chaos of broken ice. The water — that inex- 
plicable North Water — was there, a long black wedge, 
overhimg by crapy wreaths of smoke, running to the 
northward and eastward. Better than all yet, — could 
I be deceived? — a trough through the hummock- 
ridges, and level plains of ice stretching to the south. 

" Hans heard my halloo, and came up to confirm me. 
But for our disabled dogs and the waning moon-light, 
we could easily have made our journey. It was with 



DAY DREAMS. OftO 

a rejoiced heart that I made my way back to om^ mis- 
erable little cavern, and restuffed its gaping entrance 
with the snow. We had no blubber, and of course no 
fire ; but I knew we could gain the brig, and that, after 
refreshing the dogs and ourselves, we could now as- 
suredly reach the settlements. 

"February 12. Hans is off for his hunting-lodge, 
^ over the hills and far away,' beyond Charlotte Wood 
Fiord. He thinks he can bring back a deer, and the 
chances are worth the trial. We can manage the small 
hunt, Petersen and I, till he comes back unless we 
break down too. But I do not like these symptoms 
of mine, and Petersen is very far from the man he 
was. We had a tramp to-day, both of us, after an im- 
aginary deer, — a hennisoaJc that has been supposed for 
the last three days to be hunting the neighborhood 
of the waterpools of the brig fiord, and have come 
back jaded and sad. If Hans gives way, God help 
us!" 

" We worked on board — those of us who could work 
at all — at arranging a new gangway with a more gen- 
tle slope, to let some of the party crawl up from their 
hospital into the air. We were six, all told, out of 
eighteen, who could affect to hunt, cook, or nurse. 

" Meanwhile we tried to dream of commerce with 
the Esquimaux, and open water and home. For myself, 
my thoughts have occupation enough in the question 
of our closing labors. I never lost my hope. I looked 
to the coming spring as full of responsibilities ; but 1 
had bodily strength and moral tone enough to look 
through them to the end. A trust, based on experi- 
ence as well as on promises, buoyed me up at the 
worst of times. Call it fatalism, as you ignorantly 
may, there is that in the story of every eventful life 



684 THE COMING DAWN. 

whicli teaches the inefficiency of human means and 
the present control of a Supreme Agency. See how 
often rehef has come at the moment of extremity, in 
forms strangely unsought, almost at the time unwel- 
come ; see, still more, how the back has been strength- 
ened to its increasiijg burden, and the heart cheered 
by some unconscious influence of an unseen Power. 

*^ February 21. To-day the crests of the northeast 
headland were gilded by true sunshine, and all who 
were able assembled on deck to greet it. The sun 
rose above the horizon, though still screened from our 
eyes by intervening hills. Although the powerful re- 
fraction of Polar latitudes heralds his direct appear- 
ance by brilliant light, this is as far removed from 
the glorious tints of day as it is from the mere twi- 
light. Nevertheless, for the past ten days we have 
been watching the growing warmth of our landscape, 
as it emerged from buried shadow, through all the 
stages of distinctness of an India-ink washing, step by 
step, into the sharp, bold definition of our desolate 
harbor scene. We have marked every dash of color 
which the great Painter in his benevolence vouchsafed 
to us ; and now the empurpled blues, clear, unmistak- 
able, the spreading lake, the flickering yellow : peer- 
ing at all these, poor wretches ! everything seemed 
superlative luster and unsurpassable glory. We had 
so grovelled in darkness that we oversaw the light. 

" February 22. Washington's birthday : all our col- 
ors flying in the new simlight. A day of good omen, 
even to the sojourners among the ice. Hans comes 
in with great news. He has had a shot at our ben- 
nesoak, a long shot ; but it reached him. The ani- 
mal made off at a slow run, but we are sure of him 
now. This same deer has been hann^in"; round the 




^^=^^^^ 





AECTIC SEA-GULLS. 



a#' %^ 





EIDER ISLAND DUCKS. 



JOYFUL NEWS. 



587 



lake at the fiord through all the dim returning twi- 
light ; and so many stories were told of his appear- 
ance and movements that he had almost grown into a 
myth. 

" 23. Hans was out early this morning on the trail 
of the wounded deer. Rhina, the least barbarous of 
our sledge-dogs, assisted him. He was back by noon 
with the joyful news, ^ The tukkuk dead only two 
miles up big fiord ! ' The cry found its way through 
the hatch, and came back in a broken huzza from the 
sick men. 

"February 25, Sunday. The day of rest for those 
to whom rest can be ; the day of grateful recognition 
for all ! John, our volunteer cook of yesterday, is 
down : Morton, who could crawl out of bed to play 
baker for the party, and stood to it manfully yesterdiiy, 
is down too. I have just one man left to help me in 
caring for the sick. Hans and Petersen, thank God ! 
have vitality enough left to bear the toils of the hunt. 
One is out with his rifle, the other searching the 
traps. 

" To-day, blessed be the Great Author of Light ! I 
have once more looked upon the sun. I was stand- 
ing on deck, thinking over our prospects, when a fa- 
miliar berg, which had long been hid in shadow, 
flashed out in sun-birth. I knew this berg right well : 
it stood between Charlotte Wood Fiord and Little 
Willie's Monument. One year and one day ago I 
traveled toward it from Fern Rock to catch the sun- 
shine. Then I had to climb the hills beyond, to get 
the luxury of basking in its brightness ; but now, 
though the sun was but a single degree above the true 
horizon, it was so much elevated by refraction that the 
sheen stretched across the trough of the fiord like a 



588 A SUN-WORSHIPER. 

flaming tongue. I could not or would not resist the in- 
fluence. It was a Sunday act of worship : I started off at 
an even run, and caught him as he rolled slowly along 
the horizon, and before he sank. I was again the first 
of my party to rejoice and meditate in sunshine. It 
is the third sun I have seen rise for a moment above 
the long night of an Arctic winter. 

" I spare myself as well as the readers of this hast- 
ily-compiled volume, when I pass summarily over the 
details of our condition at this time. 

" I look back at it with recollections like those of a 
nightmare. Yet I was borne up wonderfully. I never 
doubted for an instant that the same Providence which 
had guarded us through the long darkness of winter 
was still watching over us for good, and that it was 
yet in reserve for us — for some ; I dared not hope for 
all — to bear back the tidings of our rescue to a Chris- 
tian land. But how I did not see. 

" Two attempts have been made by my orders, in 
February, to communicate with the Esquimaux at 
their huts. Both were failures. Peterson, Hans, and 
Godfrey came back to denounce the journey as im- 
practicable. I know better ; the experience of my 
two attempts in the midst of the darkness satisfies me 
that at this period of the year, the thing can be done ; 
and, if I might venture to leave our sick-bay for a 
week, I would prove it. But there are dispositions 
and influences here around me, scarcely latent, yet re- 
pressed by my presence, which make it my duty at all 
hazards to stay where I am. 

"On the 6th of March, I made the desperate ven- 
ture of sending off my only trusted and effective 
huntsman on a sledge-journey to find the Esquimaux 
of Etah. He took with hhn our two surviving dogs 



FAMINE AT ETAH. 589 

in our liglitest sledge. In three or at furthest four 
days more, I counted on his return. No language can 
express the anxiety with which our poor suffering 
crew awaited it. 

"March 10. Hans has not yet returned; so that 
he must have reached the settlement. His orders 
were, if no meat be obtained of the Esquimaux, 
to borrow their dogs and try for bears along the open 
water. In this resource I have confidence. The days 
are magnificent. 

" .... I had hardly written the above, when 
' Bim, hirriy him f sounded from the deck, mixed with 
the chorus of our returning dogs. The next minute 
Hans and myself were shaking hands. 

" He had much to tell us ; to men in our condition, 
Hans was as a man from cities. We of the wilderness 
flocked around him to hear the news. Sugar-teats of 
raw meat are passed around. ^ Speak loud, Hans, 
that they may hear, in the bunks.' 

" The ' wind-loved ' Anoatok he had reached on the 
first night after leaving the brig : no Esquimaux there 
of course ; and he slept not warmly at a temperature 
of 53° below zero. On the evening of the next day 
he reached Etah Bay, and was hailed with joyous wel- 
come. But a new phase of Esquimaux life had come 
upon its indolent, happy, blubber-fed denizens. In- 
stead of plump, greasy children, and round-cheeked 
matrons Hans saw around him lean figures of misery : 
the men looked hard and bony, and the children shriv- 
elled in the hoods which cradled them at their moth- 
ers' backs. Famine had been among them ; and the 
skin of a young sea-unicorn, lately caught, was all 
that remained to them of food. Even their dogs, their 
main reliance for the hunt and for an escape to some 



590 A WALRUS-HUNT. 

more favored camping-ground, had fallen a sacrifice 
to hunger. Only four remained out of thirty : the 
rest had been eaten. 

" Hans behaved well, and carried out my orders in 
their full spirit. He proposed to aid them in the wal- 
rus-hunt. They smiled at first with true Indian con- 
tempt : but when they saw my Marston rifle, which 
he had with him, they changed their tone. 

" I have not time to detail Hans's adventurous hunt, 
equally important to the scurvied sick of Rensselaer 
and the starving residents of Etah Bay. Metek 
speared a medium-sized walrus, and Hans gave him no 
less than five Marston balls before he gave up hris 
struggles. The beast was carried back in triumph, 
and all hands fed as if they could never know famine 
again. 

*^ I had directed Hans to endeavor to engage Myouk, 
if he could, to assist him in hunting. A most timely 
thought: for the morning's work made them re- 
ceive the invitation as a great favor. Hans got his 
share of the meat, and returned to the brig accompa- 
nied by the boy, who is now under my care on board. 
This imp — for he is full of the devil — has always had 
a relishing fancy for the kicks and cuffs with which I 
recall the forks and teaspoons when they get astray ; 
and, to tell the truth, he always takes care to earn 
them. He is very happy, but so wasted by hunger 
that the work of fattening him will be a costly one. 
Poor little fellow ! born to toil and necessity and peril ; 
stern hunter as he already is, the lines of his face are 
still soft and child-like. 

" March 25. Refraction with all its magic is back 
upon us; the ^ Delectable Mountains* appear again; 
and, as the sun has now worked his way to the margin 




THE WALRUS HUN'J'EPw 



THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS. 593 

of the northwestern horizon, we can see the blaze 
stealing out from the black portals of these uplifted 
hills, as if there were truly beyond it a celestial gate. 

" I do not know what preposterous working of brain 
led me to compare this northwestern ridge to Bun- 
yan's Delectable Mountains ; but there was a time only 
one year ago, when I used to gaze upon them with an 
eye of real longing. Very often, when they rose phan- 
tom-like into the sky, I would plan schemes by which 
to reach them, work over mentally my hard pilgrim- 
age across the ice, and my escape from Doubting 
Castle to this scene of triumph and reward. Once 
upon your coasts, inaccessible mountains, I would 
reach the Northern Ocean and gather together the rem- 
nants of poor Franklin's company. These would be to 
me the orchards and vineyards and running fountains. 
The ^Lord of the Hill would see in me a pilgrim.' 
^ Leaning upon our staves, as is common with weary pil- 
grims when they stand to talk with any by the way,' we 
would look down upon an open polar sea, refulgent 
with northern sunshine. 

'' April 2. At eleven o'clock this morning Mr. Bon- 
sall reported a man about a mile from the brig, appa- 
rently lurking on the ice-foot. I thought it was Hans, 
and we both went forward to meet him. As we drew 
closer we discovered our sledge and dog-team near 
where he stood ; but the man turned and ran to the 
south. 

" I pursued him, leaving Mr. Bonsall, who carried a 
Sharps' rifle, behind ; and the man, whom I now recog- 
nized to be Godfrey, seeing me advance alone, stopped 
and met me. He told me that he had been to the 
south as far as Northumberland Island ; that Hans was 
lying sick at Etah, in consequence of exposure ; that 

34 



594 THE DESERTER ESCAPES. 

he himself had made up his mind to go back and 
spend the rest of his life with Kalutunah and the Es- 
quimaux ; and that neither persuasion nor force should 
divert him from this purpose. 

'' Upon my presenting a pistol, I succeeded in forc- 
ing him back to the gangway of the brig; but he re- 
fused to go further ; and, being loth to injure him, I 
left him under the guardianship of Mr. BonsalFs 
weapon while T went on board for irons ; for both Bon- 
sell and myself were barely able to walk, and utterly 
incapable of controlling him by manual force and Peter- 
sen was out hunting : the rest, thirteen in all, are 
down with scurvy. I had just reached the deck when 
he turned to run. Mr. Bonsall's pistol failed at the 
cap. I jumped at once to the gun-stand ; but my 
first rifle, affected by the cold, went off in the act of 
cocking, and a second, aimed in haste at long but 
practicable distance, missed the fugitive. He made 
good his escape before we could lay hold of another 
weapon. 

"I am now more anxious than ever about Hans. 
The past conduct of Godfrey on board, and his mutin- 
ous desertion, make me aware that he is capable of 
daring wrong as well as deception. One thing is plain. 
This man at large and his comrade still on board, the 
safety of the whole company exacts the sternest ob- 
servance of discipline. I have called all hands, and an- 
nounced it as a standing order of the ship, and one to be 
observed inflexibly, that desertion, or the attempt to 
desert, shall be met at once by the sternest penalty. 
I have no alternative. 

April 3. To-day I detained Petersen from his hunt 
and took a holiday rest myself, — that is to say, went 

to bed and sweated : to-morrow T promise as much 

for Bonsall. 



A MORNING IN THE CABIN. 595 

^^ While here in bed I will give the routine of a day 
in this spring-time of year : 

"At 7:30 call 'all hands;' which means that one of 
the well trio wakes the other two. This order is 
obeyed slowly. The commander confesses for himself 
that the breakfast is well-nigh upon the table before he 
gets his stiff ankles to the floor. Looking around, he 
sees the usual mosaic of sleepers as ingeniously dove- 
tailed and crowded together as the campers-out in a 
buffalo-bag. He winds his way through them, and, as 
he does so, some stereotyped remarks are interchanged. 
^ Thomas r — our ex-cook, now" side by side with the 
first officer of the expedition, — ^Thomas, turn out!' 
' Eugh-ng, sir. ' Turn out ; get up.' Ys-sir ;' (sits bolt 
upright, and rubs his eyes.) 'How d'you feel, Mr. 
Ohlsen ?' ' Better, sir.' ' How've you passed the night, 
Mr. Brooks?' 'Middlin', sir.' And after a diversified 
series of spavined efforts, the mystical number forms 
its triangle at the table. 

'' It still stands in its simple dignity, an unclothed 
platform of boards, with a pile of plates in the center. 
Near these is a virtuoso collection of cups grouped in a 
tumulus or cairn, commencing philosophically at the 
base with heavy stoneware, and ending with battered 
tin: the absolute pinnacle a debased dredging box, 
, which makes a bad goblet, being unpleasantly sharp 
at its rim. At one end of this table, partly hid 
by the beer-barrel, stands Petersen ; at the side, Bon- 
sall; and a lime-juice cask opposite makes my seat. 
We are all standing: a momentary hush is made 
among the sick ; and the daily prayer comes with one 
heart : — ' Accept our gratitude, and restore us to our 
homes.' 

" The act of devotion over, we sit down, and look- 
not at the breakfast, but at each other. 



596 SHUNGHU'S DAUGHTER. 

'•April 10, Tuesday. I left tlie brig at 10^ a.m., 
with but five dogs and a load so light as to be hardly 
felt. My dogs, in spite of low feeding, carried me 
sixty -four miles in eleven hours. 

" Faithful Hans ! Dear good follower and friend ! 
I was out on the floes just beyond the headlands of 
our old ' Kefuge Harbor,' when I made out a black 
far in to shoreward. Kefraction will deceive a novice 
on the ice ; but we have learned to baffle refraction. 
By sighting the suspected object with your rifle at rest, 
you soon detect motion. It was a living animal — a 
man. Shoreward went the sledge; off sprang the 
dogs ten miles an hour, their driver yelling the famil- 
iar provocative to speed, ' Nannook ! nannook!' ^A 
bear! a bear!' at the top of his lungs. 

" There was no room for mistaking the methodical 
steal-stalking gait of Hans. He hardly varied from it 
as we came near ; but in about fifteen minutes we 
were shaking hands and jabbering, in a patois of Es- 
quimaux and English, our mutual news. The poor 
fellow had been really ill : five days down with severe 
pains of limbs have left him still a ' little veek ;' 
which means with Hans well used up. I stuck him 
on the sledge and carried him to Anoatok. 

" In this sickness, he told me, he was waited on 
most carefully at the settlement. A young daughter 
of Shunghu elected herself his nurse, and her sympa- 
thies and smiles have, I fear, made an impression on 
his heart which a certain damsel near Upernavik 
might be sorry to hear of 

" April 18. I am just off" a two hundred miles' jour- 
ney, bringing back my deserter, and, what is perhaps 
quite as important, a sledge-load of choice walrus- 
cuts. 



CAPTURE OF OUR DESERTER. 597 

" I found from Hans that his negotiation for the dogs 
had failed, and that unless I could do something by 
individual persuasion I must give up my scheme of a 
closing exploration to the north. I learned too that 
Grodfrej was playing the great man at Etah, defying 
recapture ; and I was not willing to trust the influence 
he might exert on my relations with the tribe. I de- 
termined that he should return to the brig. 

" I began by stratagem. I placed a pair of foot- 
cuffs on Metek's sledge, and, after looking carefully to 
my body -companion six-shooter, invited myself to ride 
back with him to Etah. His nephew remained on 
board in charge of Hans, and I disguised myself so 
well in my nessak that, as we moved off, I could 
easily have passed for the boy Paulik, whose place I 
had taken. 

" As our eighty miles drew to an end, and that 
which we call the settlement came close in view, its 
population streamed out to welcome their chief's re- 
turn. Among the first and most prominent was the 
individual whom I desired to meet, waving his hand 
and shouting ^Tima!' as loudly as the choicest sav- 
age of them all. An instant later, and I was at his 
ear, with a short phrase of salutation and its appro- 
priate gesture. He yielded unconditionally at once, 
and, after walking and running by turns for some 
eighty miles before the sledge, with a short respite at 
Anoatok, is now a prisoner on board. 

'' My remaining errand at Etah was almost as suc- 
cessful. The inmates of the burrows swarmed around 
me as I arrived. ^ Nalegak ! nalegak ! tima ! ' was 
yelled in chorus : never seemed people more anxious 
to propitiate, or more pleased with an unexpected 
visit. But they were airily clad, and it blew a north- 



598 A VISIT TO ETAH. 

wester ; and they soon crowded back into their ant- 
hill. Meantime preparations were making for my in- 
door reception, and after a little while Metek and my- 
self crawled in on hands and knees, through an extra- 
ordinary tossut thirty paces long. As I emerged on 
the inside, the salute of ' nalegak ' was repeated with 
an increase of energy that was anything but pleas- 
ant. 

"There were guests before me, — six sturdy deni- 
zens of the neighboring settlement. They had been 
overtaken by the storm while hunting, and were al- 
ready crowded upon the central dais of honor. They 
united in the yell of welcome, and I soon found my- 
self gasping the ammoniacal steam of some fourteen 
vigorous, amply-fed, unwashed, unclothed fellow-lodg- 
ers. No hyperbole could exaggerate that which in 
serious earnest I give as the truth. The platform meas- 
ured but seven feet in breadth by six in depth, the 
shape being semi- elliptical. Upon this, including 
children and excluding myself, were bestowed thir- 
teen persons. 

" The kotluk of each matron was glowing with a 
flame sixteen inches long. A flipper-quarter of wal- 
rus, which lay frozen on the floor of the netek, was cut 
into steaks ; and the kolopsuts began to smoke with a 
burden of ten or fifteen pounds apiece. Metek, with a 
little amateur aid from some of the sleepers, emptied 
these without my assistance. I had the most cordial 
invitation to precede them ; but I had seen enough of 
the culinary regime to render it impossible. I broke 
my fast on a handful of frozen liver-nuts that Bill 
brouglit me, and, bursting out into a profuse perspira- 
tion, I stripped like the rest, threw my well-tired car- 
cass across Mrs. Eider-duck's extremities, put her left- 




THE ATLUK OR SEAL-HOLE. 




SHOOTING SEAL. 




WALRUS SPORTING. 



A NOBLE SAYAGE. 601 

hand baby under my armpit, pillowed my head on My- 
ouk's somewhat warm stomach, and thus, an honored 
guest and in the place of honor, fell asleep. 

" We continued toiling on with our complicated pre- 
parations till the evening of the 24th, when Hans 
came back well laden with walrus-meat. Three of the 
Esquimaux accompanied him, each with his sledge and 
dog-team fully equipped for a hunt. The leader of 
the party, Kalutunah, was a noble savage, greatly supe- 
rior in every thing to the others of his race. He 
greeted me with respectful courtesy, yet as one who 
might rightfully expect an equal measure of it in re- 
turn, and, after a short interchange of salutations, seat- 
ed himself in the post of honor at my side. 

" I waited of course till the company had fed and 
slept, for among savages especially haste is indecorous, 
and then, after distributing a few presents, opened to 
them my project of a northern exploration. Kalutu- 
nah received his knife and needles with a ^ Kuyanaka,' 
^I thank you:' the first thanks I have heard from a 
native of this upper region. He called me his friend, 
— ' Asakaoteet,' ' I love you well,' — and would be happy, 
he said, to join the ' nalegak-soak ' in a hunt. 

" We started with a wild yell of dogs and men 
in chorus, Kalutunah and myself leading. We halted 
about thirty miles north of the brig, after edging 
along the coast about thirty miles to the eastward. 
Here Shanghu burrowed into a snow-bank and slept, 
the thermometer standing at —30°. The rest of us 
turned in to lunch. 

" The journey began again as the feast closed, and 
we should have accomplished my wishes had it not 
been for the untoward influence of sundry bears. The 
tracks of these animals were becoming more and more 



602 A BEAK HUNT. 

numerous as we rounded one iceberg after another ; 
and we could see the beds they had worn m the snow 
while watching for seal. These swayed the dogs from 
their course : yet we kept edging onward ; and when 
in sight of the northern coast, about thirty miles from 
the central peak of the ' Three Brothers/ I saw a deep 
band of stratus lying over the horizon in the'direction 
of Kennedy Channel. This water-sky indicated the 
continued opening of the channel, and made me more 
deeply anxious to proceed. But at this moment our 
dogs encountered a large male bear in the act of de- 
vouring a seal. The impulse was irresistible : I lost 
all control over both dogs and drivers. They 
seemed dead to every thmg but the passion of pur- 
suit. Off they sped with incredible swiftness ; the 
Esquimaux clinging to their sledges and cheering 
their dogs with loud cries of 'Nannook!' A mad, wild 
chase, wilder than German legend, — the dogi=!, wolves ; 
the drivers, devils. After a furious run the animal 
was brought to bay ; the lance and the rifle did their 
work, and we halted for a general feed. The dogs 
gorged themselves, the drivers did as much, and we 
buried the remainder of the carcass in the snow. 

" We took a four hours' sleep on the open ice, the 
most uncomfortable that I remember. Our fatigue 
had made us dispense with the snow-house; and 
though I was heavily clad in a full suit of furs, and 
squeezed myself in between Kalutunah and Shanghu, 
I could not bear the intense temperature. I rose in 
the morning stiff and sore. I mention it as a trait of 
nobleness on the part of Kalutunah, which I appreci- 
ated very sensibly at the time, that, seeing me suffer, 
he toolv his kapetah from his back and placed it 
around my feet. 



ENTERPRISING HUNTERS. 



603 



" The next day I tried again to make my friends 
steer to the northward. But the bears were most nu- 
merous upon the Greenland side ; and they determined 
to push on toward the glacier. All my remonstran- 
ces and urgent entreaties were unavailing to make 
them resume their promised route. 

" I found now that my projected survey of the 
northern coast must be abandoned, at least for the 
time. My next wish was to get back to the brig, and 
to negotiate with Metek for a purchase or loan of 
his dogs as my last chance. But even this was not 
readily gratified. All of Saturday was spent in bear- 
hunting. The natives, as indomitable as their dogs, 
made the entire circuit of Dallas Bay, and finally 
halted again under one of the islands which group 
themselves between the headlands of Advance Bay 
and at the base of the glacier." 




CHAPTER XXXVI. 

DR. KANE'S SECOND EXPEDITION. 

(continued.) 

^' The detailed preparations for our escape would 
have little interest for the general reader ; but they 
were so arduous and so important that I cannot pass 
them by without a special notice. They had been 
begun from an early day of the fall, and had not been 
entirely intermitted during our severest winter-trials. 

" Recognizing the importance of acting directly upon 
the men's minds, my first step now was to issue a gen- 
eral order appointing a certain day, the 17th of May, 
for setting out. Every man had twenty-four hours 
given him to select and get ready his eight pounds 
of personal effects. After that, his time was to cease 
to be his own for any purpose. 

" I tried my best also to fix and diffuse impressions 
that we were 2:oino' home. But in this I was not al- 
ways successful : I was displeased, indeed, with the 
moody indifference with which many went about the 
tasks to which I put them. The completeness of my 
preparations I know had its influence ; but there were 
many doubters. Some were convinced that my only 
ol)joct was to move farther south, retaining the brig, 
however, as a home to retreat to. Others whispered 
that I wanted to transport the sick to the hunting- 
grounds and other resources of the lower settlements^ 

604 



TREPARATIONS FOR STARTING SOUTH, 607 

which I had such difficulty in preventing the muti- 
nous from securing for themselves alone. A few of a 
more cheerful spirit thought I had resolved to make 
for some point of look-out, in the hope of a rescue by 
whalers or English expedition-parties which were sup- 
posed still to be within the Arctic circle. The number 
is unfortunately small of those human beings whom 
calamity elevates. 

" There was no sign of affectation of spirited enthusi- 
asm upon the memorable day when we first adjusted the 
boats to their cradles on the sledges and moved them 
off to the ice-foot. But the ice immediately around 
the vessel was smooth -, and, as the boats had not re- 
ceived their lading, the first labor was an easy one. 
As the runners moved, the gloom of several counte- 
nances was perceptibly lightened. The croakers had 
protested that we could not stir an inch. These cheer- 
ing remarks always reach a commander's ears, and I 
took good care of course to make the outset contra- 
dict them. By the time we reached the end of our 
little level, the tone had improved wonderfully, and 
w^e were prepared for the effort of crossing the suc- 
cessive lines of the belt-ice and forcing a way through 
the smashed material which interposed between us and 
the ice-foot. 

" This was a work of great difficulty, and sorrowfully 
exhausting to the poor fellows not yet accustomed to 
heave together. But in the end I had the satisfaction^ 
before twenty-four hours were over, of seeing our lit- 
tle arks of safety hauled upon the higher plane of the 
icefoot, in full trim for ornamental exhibition from 
the brig ; their neat canvas housing rigged tent-fash- 
ion over the entire length of each ; a jaunty little flag 
made out of one of the commander's obsolete linen 



608 FAREWELL TO THE BRIG. 

shirts, decorated in stripes from a disused article of 
stationery, the red ink-bottle, and with a very little of 
the bkie-bag in the star-spangled corner. All hands 
after this returned on board : I had ready for them 
the best supper our supplies afforded, and they 
turned in with minds prepared for their departure next 
day. 

" Our last farewell to the brig was made with more 
solemnity. The entire ship's company was collected 
in our dismantled winter-chamber, to take part in the 
ceremonial. It was Sunday. Our moss walls had 
been torn down, and the wood that supported them 
burned. Our beds were off at the boats. The galley 
was unfurnished and cold. Every thing about the lil> 
tie den of refuge was desolate. 

^^We read prayers and a chapter of the Bible; and 
then, all standing silently round, I took Sir John 
Franklin's portrait from its frame and cased it in an 
India-rubber scroll. I next read the reports of inspec- 
tion and scurvy which had been made by the several 
commissioners organized for the purpose, all of them 
testifying to the necessities under which I was about 
to act. I then addressed the party : I did not affect 
to disguise the difficulties that were before us ; but I 
assured them that they could all be overcome by en- 
ergy and subordination to command: and that the 
thirteen hundred miles of ice and water that lay be- 
tween us and North Greenland could be traversed 
with safety for most of us and hope for all. 

" I was met with a right spirit. After a short con- 
ference, an engagement was drawn up by one of the 
officers, and brought to me, with the signatures of all 
the company, without an exception. 

" We then went upon deck : the flags were hoisted 



THE SICK AT ANOATOK. 611 

and hauled down again, and our party walked once or 
twice around the brig, looking at her timbers and ex- 
changing comments upon the scars which reminded 
them of every stage of her dismantling. Our figure- 
head — the fair Augusta, the little blue girl with pink 
cheeks, who had lost her breast by an iceberg and her 
nose by a nip off Bedevilled Eeach — was taken from 
our bows and placed aboard the ' Hope/ ' She is at 
any rate wood,' said the men, when I hesitated about 
giving them the additional burden ; ' and if we can- 
not carry her far we can burn her.' 

" As I review my notes of the first few days of our 
ice-journey, I find them full of incidents interesting 
and even momentous when they occurred, but which 
cannot claim a place in this narrative. The sledges 
were advancing slowly, the men often discouraged, 
and now and then one giving way under the unaccus- 
tomed labor ; the sick at Anoatok always dreary in 
their solitude, and suffering, perhaps, under an exacer- 
bation of disease, or, like the rest of us, from a pen- 
ury of appropriate food. Things looked gloomy 
enough at times. 

" Taking with me Morton, my faithful adjutant al- 
ways, I hurried on to the brig. It was in the full 
glare of noon that we entered the familiar curve of 
Rensselaer Bay, The black spars of our deserted 
vessel cut sharply against the shores ; there was the 
deeply-marked snow-track that led to Observatory 
Island and the graves of poor Baker and Schubert, 
with their cairn and its white-cross beacon : everything 
looked as when we defiled in funeral procession round 
the cliffs a year before. But, as we came close upon 
the brig and drove our dogs up the gangway, along 
which Bonsall and myself had staggered so often with 



612 APPROACH TO ETAH. 

our daily loads of ice, we beared the rustling of wings, 
and a large raven sailed away in the air past Sylvia 
Headland. It was old Magog, one of a pair that had 
cautiously haunted near our brig during the last two 
years. He had already appropriated our homestead. 

" We lighted fires in the galley, melted pork, baked 
a large batch of bread, gathered together a quantity 
of beans and dried apples, somewhat damaged but still 
eatable, and by the time our dogs had fed and rested, 
we were ready for the return. I gave a last look at 
the desolate galley-stove, the representative of our 
long winter's fire-side, at the still bright coppers now 
full of frozen water, the theodolite, the chart-box, and 
poor Wilson's guitar, — one more at the remnant of 
the old moss walls, the useless daguerreotypes, and the 
skeletons of dog and deer and bear and musk-ox, — 
stoppered in the rigging ; — and, that done, whipped 
up my dogs so much after the manner of a sentimen- 
talizing Christian, that our pagan Metek raised a 
prayer in their behalf 

"It was quite late in the evening when I drew near 
Etah. I mean that it was verging on to our midnight, 
the sun being low in the heavens, and the air breath- 
ing that solemn stillness which belongs to the sleeping- 
time of birds and plants. I had not quite reached 
the little settlement when loud sounds of laughter 
came to my ear ; and, turning the cape, I burst sud- 
denly upon an encampment of the inhabitants. 

" Some thirty men, women, and children, were gath- 
ered together upon a little face of offal-stained rock. 
Except a bank of moss, which broke the wind-draught, 
from the fiord, they were entirely without protection 
from the weather, though the temperature was 5° be- 
low zero. The huts were completly deserted, the 



A MIDNIGHT FESTIVAL. 613 

snow tossut had fallen in, and the window was as free 
and open as summer to the purifying air. Every liv- 
ing thing about the settlement was out upon the bare 
rocks. 

" Rudest of gypsies, how they squalled, and laughed^ 
and snored, and rolled about! Some were sucking 
bird-skins, others were boiling incredible numbers of 
auks in huge soapstone pots, and two youngsters, cry- 
ing, at the top of their voices, ' Oopegsoak 1 Oopeg- 
soak!' were .fighting for an owl. It was the only 
specimen that I had seen except on the wing ; but, be- 
fore I could secure it, they had torn it limb from limb, 
and were eating its warm flesh and blood, their faces 
buried among its dishevelled feathers. 

" The scene was redolent of plenty and ignorance, 
the dolcefar niente of the short-lived Esquimaux sum- 
mer. Provision for the dark winter was furthest from 
their thoughts ; for, although the rocks were patched 
with sun-dried birds, a single hunting party from Pe- 
teravik could have eaten up their entire supplies in a 
single night. 

^' Before I left Etah on my return, I took an early 
stroll with Sip-su, ^ the handsome boy,' to the lake back 
of my old traveling-route, and directly under the face 
of the glacier. 

" He led me first to the play-ground, where all his 
young friends of the settlement were busy in one of 
their sports. Each of them had a walrus-rib for a 
golph or shinny-stick, and they were contending to 
drive a hurley, made out of the round knob of a flip- 
per-joint, up a bank of frozen snow. Roars of laugh- 
ter greeted the impatient striker as he missed his blow 
at the shining ball, and eager cries told how close the 
match was drawing to an end. They were counting 



614 THE SICK IMPROVING. 

on the fingers of both hands, eight, eight, eight : the 
game is ten. 

^'Strange, — the thought intruded itself, but there 
was no wisdom in it, — strange that these famine- 
pinched wanderers of the ice should rejoice in sports 
and playthings like the children of our own smiling 
sky, and that parents should fashion for them 
toy sledges, and harpoons, and nets, miniature em- 
blems of a life of suffering and peril ! how strange this 
joyous merriment under the monitory shadow of these 
jagged ice-cliffs ! My spirit was oppressed as I imag- 
ined the possibility of our tarrying longer in these fro- 
zen regions ; but it was ordinary life with these other 
children of the same Creator, and they were playing 
as unconcerned as the birds that circled above our 
heads. ' Fear not, therefore : ye are of more value 
than many sparrows.* 

" I was glad when I reached the sick-station to find 
things so much better. Everybody was stronger, and, 
as a consequence, more cheerful. They had learned 
housekeeping with its courtesies as well as comforts. 
Their kotluk would have done credit to Aningnah her- 
self: they had a dish of tea for us, and a lump of wal- 
rus; and they bestirred themselves real housewife- 
fashion, to give us the warm place and make us com- 
fortable. I was right sorry to leave them, for the 
snow outside was drifting with the gale ; but after a 
little while the dogs struck the track of the sledges, 
and, following it with unerring instinct, did not slacken 
their pace till they had brought us to our compan- 
ions on the floe. 

" They had wisely halted on account of the storm, 
and, with their three little boats drawn up side by side 
for mutual protection, had been lying to for the past 



OUT IN A GALE. 615 

two days, tightly housed, and moored fast by whale- 
lines to the ice. But the drifts had almost buried the 
' Hope/ which was the windward boat ; and when I 
saw the burly form of Brooks emerging from the 
snow-covered roof, I could have fancied it a walrus 
rising through the ice. 

" Six Esquimaux, three of them women, — the ugly 
beauty, Nessark's wife, at the head of them, — had 
come off to the boats for shelter from the gale. They 
seemed so entirely deferential, and to recognize with 
such simple trust our mutual relations of alliance, that 
I resolved to drive down to Etah with Petersen as in- 
terpreter, and formally claim assistance, according to 
their own laws, on the ground of our established 
brotherhood. 

" Our dogs moved slowly, and the discolored ice ad- 
monished me to make long circuits. As we neared 
Littleton Island, the wind blew so fiercely from the 
southwest, that I determined to take the in-shore chan- 
nel and attempt to make the settlement over land. 
But I was hardly under the lee of the island, when 
there broke upon us one of the mo^t fearful gales I 
have ever experienced. It had the character and the 
force of a cyclone. The dogs were literally blown 
from their harness, and it was only by throwing our- 
selves on our faces that we saved ourselves from being 
swept away : it seemed as if the ice must give way. 
We availed ourselves of a momentary lull to shoulder 
the sledge, and, calling the affrighted dogs around 
us, made for the rocks of Eider Island, and, after the 
most exhausting exertions, succeded in gaining terra 
firma. 

" We struck a headland on the main shore, where a 
dark hornblende rock, perhaps thirty feet high;, had 

35 



616 COMIC MIS Ell Y. 

formed a barricade, behind which the drifts piled them- 
selves ; and into this mound of snow w^e had just 
strength enough left to dig a burrow. We knew it 
soon after as Cape Misery. 

" The dogs and sledge were dragged in, and Peter- 
sen and myself, reclining ^spoon-fashion/ cowered 
among them. The snow piled over us all, and we were 
very soon so roofed in and quilted round that the 
storm seemed to rage far outside of us. We could 
only hear the wind droning like a great fly-wheel, ex- 
cept when a surge of greater malignity would sweep 
up over our burial-place and sift the snow upon the 
surface like hail. Our greatest enemy here was 
warmth. Our fur jumj)ers had been literally torn off 
our backs by the wind ; but the united resjoiration of 
dogs and men melted the snow around us, and we 
were soon wet to the skin. 

" Is it possible to imagine a juncture of more comic 
annoyance than that which now introduced itself 
among the terrors of our position ? Toodla, our mas- 
ter-dog, was seized with a violent fit ; and, as their 
custom is, his companions indulged in a family con- 
flict upon the occasion, which was only mediated, after 
much effort, at the sacrifice of all that remained of 
Petersen's pantaloons and drawers. 

" We had all the longing for repose that accompa- 
nies extreme prostration, and had been fearing every 
moment that the combatants would bring the snow 
down upon us. At last down came our whole canopy, 
and we were exposed in an instant to the fury of the 
elements. I do not think, often as I have gone up on 
deck from a close cabin in a gale at sea, that I was 
ever more struck with the extreme noise and tumult 
of a storm. 




BOAT CAMP IN A STORM. 




GOOD-BYE TO THE ESQUIMAUX. 



A CRYSTAL PALACE. 619 

" Once more snowed up, — for the drift built its crys- 
tal palace rapidly about us, — we remained cramped 
and seething till our appetites reminded us of the ne- 
cessities of the inner man. To breast the gale was 
simply impossible ; the alternative was to drive before 
it to the north and east. Forty miles of floundering 
travel brought us in twenty hours to the party on the 
floes. 

" Still passing slowly on day after day, — I am reluc- 
tant to borrow from my journal the details of anxiety 
and embarrassment with which it abounds throughout 
this period, — we came at last to the unmistakable 
neighborhood of the open water. We were off Peki- 
utlik, the largest of the Littleton Island group, oppo- 
site ' Kosoak,' the Great River. Here Mr. Wilson and 
George Whipple rejoined us, under the faithful charge 
of old Nessark. It was with truly thankful hearts 
we united in our prayers that evening. 

" One only was absent of all the party that re- 
mained on our rolls. Hans, the kind son and ardent 
young lover of Fiskernaes, my well-trusted friend, had 
been missing for nearly two months. I am loth to 
tell the story as I believe it, for it may not be the 
true one, after all, and I would not intimate an unwar- 
ranted doubt of the constancy of boyish love. But 
I must explain, as far as I can at least, why he was not 
with us when we first looked at the open water. Just 
before my departure for my April hunt, Hans came to 
me with a long face, asking permission to visit Peteravik : 
' he had no boots, and wanted to lay in a stock of 
walrus-hide for soles : he did not need the dogs ; he 
would rather walk.' It was a long march, but he 
was well practised in it, and I consented, of course. 

" Hans the faithful — yet, I fear, the faithless — ^was 



620 AT THE OPEN WATER. 

last seen upon a native sledge, driving south from Peter- 
avik with a maiden at his side, and professedly bound 
to a new principality at Uwarrow Suk-suk, high up 
Murchison's Sound. Alas for Hans, the married man ! 
"June 16. Our boats are at the open water. We 
see its deep indigo horizon, and hear its roar against 
the icy beach. Its scent is in our nostrils and 
our hearts. Our camp is but three-quarters of a 
mile from the sea : it is at the northern curve of the 
North Baffin polynia. We must reach it at the south- 
ern sweep of Etah Bay, about three miles from Cape 
Alexander. A dark headland defines the spot. It is 
more marked than the southern entrance of Smith's 
Straits. How magnificently the surf beats against its 
sides. 

"The Esquimaux are camped by our side, — the 
whole settlement of Etah congregated around the ^big 
caldron ' of Cape Alexander, to bid us good-bye. There 
are Metek, and Nualik his wife, our old acquaintance 
Mrs. Eider-duck, and their five children, commencing 
with Myouk, my body-guard, and ending with the 
ventricose little Accomodah. There is Nessark and 
Anak his wife ; and Tellerk the ' Right Arm,' and Am- 
aunalik his wife ; and Sip su, and Marsumah and An- 
ingnah — and who not? I can name them every one, 
and they know us as well. We have found brothers 
in a strange land. 

" Each one has a knife, or a file, or a saw, or some such 
treasured keepsake ; and the children have a lump of 
soap, the greatest of all great medicines. The merry little 
urchins break in upon me even now as I am writing : 
—' Kuyanake, kuyanake, Nalegak-soak !' ' Thank you, 
thank you, big chief!' Avhile Myouk is crowding fresh 
presents of raw birds on me as if I could eat forever, 



GOOD-BYE TO THE ESQUIMAUX. 621 

and poor Aningnah is crying beside the tent-curtain, 
wiping her eyes on a bird-skin. 

" But see ! more of them are coming up — boys ten 
years old pushing forward babies on their sledges. 
The whole nation is gypsying with us upon the icy 
meadows. 

"We cook for them in our big camp-kettle ; they 
sleep in the Red Eric ; a berg close at hand supplies 
them with water : and thus, rich in all that they value, 
— sleep and food and drink and companionship, — with 
their treasured short-lived summer sun above them, 
the leau ideal and sum of Esquimaux blessings, they 
seem supremely happy. 

" Poor creatures ! it is only six months ago that 
starvation was among them: many of the faces 
around me have not yet lost the lines of wasting sus- 
pense. The walrus-season is again of doubtful produc- 
tiveness, and they are cut off from their brethren to 
the south, at Netelik and Appah, until winter rebuilds 
the avenue of ice. With all this, no thoughts of the 
future cross them. Babies squall, and women chatter, 
and the men weave their long yarns with peals of rat- 
tling hearty laughter between. 

" They listened with breathless interest, closing their 
circle round me ; and, as Petersen described the big 
ussuk, the white whale, the bear, and the long open 
water hunts with the kayak and the rifle, they looked 
at each other with a significance not to be misunder- 
stood. 

" It was in the soft subdued light of a Sunday evening, 
June 17, that, after hauling our boats with much hard 
labor through hummocks, we stood beside the open sea- 
way. Before midnight we had launched the Red Eric, 
and given three cheers for Henry Grinnell and ^home- 
ward bound,' unfurling all our flags. 



622 EMBARKATION. 

"But we were not yet to embark; for the gale 
which had been long brooding now began to dash a 
heavy wind-Upper against the floe, and obliged us to 
retreat before it, hauling our boats back with each 
fresh breakage of the ice. It rose more fiercely, and 
we were obliged to give way before it still more. Our 
goods, which had been stacked u]3on the ice, had to be 
carried farther inward. We worked our wav back thus, 
step by step, before the breaking ice, for about two 
hundred yards. At last it became apparent that the 
men must sleep and rest, or sink ; and, giving up for 
the present all thoughts of embarking, I hauled the 
boats at once nearly a mile from the water's edge, 
where a large iceberg was frozen tight in the floes. 

" The gale died awny to a calm, and the water be- 
came as tranquil as if the gale had never been. All 
hands were called to prepare for embarking. The 
boats were stowed, and the cargo divided between 
them equally ; the sledges unlashed and slung outside 
the gunwales; and on Thursday the 19th, at 4 p.m., 
with the bay as smooth as a garden-lake, I put off in 
the Faith. She was followed by the Red Eric on our 
quarter, and the Hope astern. 

" We crossed Murchison Channel on the 23d, and 
encamped for the night on the land-floe at the base of 
Cape Perry ; a hard day's travel, partly by tracking over 
ice, partly through tortuous and zigzag leads. The 
next day brought us to the neighborhood of Fitz Clar- 
ence Rock, one of the most interesting monuments 
that rear themselves along this dreary coast : in a re- 
gion more familiar to men, it would be a landmark to 
the navigator. It rises from a field of ice like an Egyp- 
tian pyramid surmounted by an obelisk. 

" While the men slept after their weary labor, Mc- 



A SADDENING VIEW. 623 

Gary and myself climbed the berg for a view ahead. 
It was a saddening one. Every thing showed how in- 
tense the last winter had been. We were close upon 
the 1st of July, and had a right to look for the North 
Water of the whalers where we now had solid ice or 
close pack, both of them almost equally unfavorable 
to our progress. Far off in the distance — how far I 
could not measure — rose the Dalrymple Kock, pro- 
jecting from the lofty precipice of the island ahead ; 
but between us and it the land-ice spread itself from 
the base of Saunder's Island unbroken to the Far 
South. 

" The imperfect diet of the party was showing itself 
more and more in the decline of their muscular 
power. They seemed scarcely aware of it themselves, 
and referred the difficulty they found in dragging and 
pushing, to something uncommon about the ice or 
sledge rather than to their own weakness. But, as 
we endeavored to renew our labors through the morn- 
ing fog, belted in on all sides by ice-fields so distorted 
and rugged as to defy our efforts to cross them, the 
truth seemed to burst upon every one. We had lost 
the feeling of hunger, and were almost satisfied with 
our pasty broth and the large draughts of tea which 
accompanied it. I was anxious to send our small 
boat, the Eric, across to the lumme-hill of Appah, 
where I knew from the Esquimaux we should find 
plenty of birds ; but the strength of the party was 
insufficient to drag her. 

" We were sorely disheartened, and could only wait 
for the fog to rise, in the hope of some smoother plat- 
form than that which was about us, or some lead 
that might save us the painful labor of tracking. I had 
climbed the iceberg ; and there was nothing in view ex- 
cept Dalrymple Eock, with its rod brassy face tower- 



624 BREAK-UP OF THE FLOE. 

ing in the unknown distance. But I hardly got back 
to my boat, before a gale struck us from the north- 
west, and a floe, taking upon a tongue of ice about a 
mile to the north of us, began to swing upon it like 
a pivot and close slowly in upon our narrow resting- 
place. 

*' At first our own floe also was driven before the 
wind ; but in a little while it encountered the stationary 
ice at the foot of the very rock itself On the instant 
the wildest imaginable ruin rose around us. The men 
sprang mechanically each one to his station, bearing 
back the boats and stores ; but I gave up for the mo- 
ment all hope of our escape. It was not a nip, such as is 
familiar to Arctic navigators ; but the whole platform, 
where we stood and for hundreds of yards on every 
side of us, crumbled and crushed and piled and tossed 
itself madly under the pressure. I do not believe 
that of our little body of men, all of them disciplined 
in trials, able to measure danger while combatting it, 
— I do not believe there is one who this day can ex- 
plain how or why — hardly when, in fact — we found 
ourselves afloat. We only know that in the midst of 
a clamor utterly indescribable, through which the bray- 
ing of a thousand trumpets could no more have been 
heard than the voice of a man, we were shaken and 
raised and whirled and let down again in a swelling 
waste of broken hummocks, and, as the men grasped 
their boat-hooks in the stillness that followed, the 
boats eddied away in a tumultuous skreed of ice and 
snow and water. 

" We were borne along in this manner as long as 
the imbroken remnant of the in-shore floe continued 
revolving, — utterly powerless, and catching a glimpse 
every now and then of the brazen headland that 



WEARY man's rest. 625 

looked down on us through the snowy sky. At last 
the floe brought up against the rocks, the looser frag- 
ments that hung round it began to separate, and we 
were able by oars and boat-hooks to force our battered 
little flotilla clear of them. To our joyful surprise, 
we soon found ourselves in a stretch of the land-water 
wide enough to give us rowing-room, and with the as- 
sured promise of land close ahead. 

"At three o'clock the tide was high enough for us to 
scale the ice-cliff. One by one we pulled up the boats 
upon a narrow shelf, the whole sixteen of us uniting at 
each pull. We were too much worn down to un- 
load ; but a deep and narrow gorge opened in the 
cliffs almost at the spot where we clambered up ; and, 
as we pushed the boats into it on an even keel, the 
rocks seemed to close above our heads, until an abrupt 
turn in the course of the ravine placed a protecting 
cliff between us and the gale. We were completely 
encaved. 

'- Just as we had brought in the last boat, the Red 
Eric, and were shoring her up with blocks of ice, a 
long-unheard but familiar and unmistakable sound 
startled and gladdened our ears, and a flock of eiders 
flecking the sky for a moment passed swiftly in front 
of us. We knew that we must be at their breedino;- 
grounds ; and as we turned in wet and hungry to our 
long coveted sleep, it was only to dream of eggs and 
abundance. 

" On the 3d of July, the wind began to moderate, 
though the snow still fell heavily ; and the next morn- 
ing, after a patriotic egg-nog, the liquor borrowed 
grudgingly from our alcohol-flask, and diluted till it 
was worthy of temperance praise, — we lowered our 
boats, and bade a grateful farewell to ' Weary Man's 



626 THE ESQUIMAUX EDEN. 

Rest' We rowed to the southeast end of Wosten- 
holme Island ; but the tide left us there^ and we moved 
to the ice-foot. 

" Our descent to the coast followed the margin of the 
fast ice. After passing the Crimson Cliff of Sir John 
Ross, it wore almost the dress of a holiday excursion, 
— a rude one perhaps, but truly one in feeling. Our 
course, except where a protruding glacier interfered 
with it, was nearly parallel to the shore. The birds 
along it were rejoicing in the young summer, and 
when we halted it was upon some green-clothed cape 
near a stream of water from the ice-field above. Our 
sportsmen would clamber up the cliffs and come back 
laden with little auks; great generous fires of turf, 
that cost nothing but the toil of gathering, blazed 
merrily ; and our happy oarsmen, after a long day's 
work, made easy by the promise ahead, would stretch 
themselves in the sunshine and dream happily away 
till called to the morning Avash and prayers. We en- 
joyed it the more, for we all of us knew that it could 
not last. '' 

^ ^ ^ ^ TV* 'n* 

" I was awakened one evening from a weary sleep 
in my fox-skins, to discover that we had fairl}^ lost our 
way. The officer at the helm of the leading boat, 
misled by the irregular shape of a large iceberg that 
crossed his track, had lost the main lead some time 
before, and was steering shoreward far out of the true 
course. The little canal in which he had locked us 
was hardly two boats'-lengths across, and lost itself not 
far off in a feeble zigzag both behind and before us: 
it was evidently closing, and we could not retreat. 

"Without apprising the men of our misadventure, I 
ordered the boats hauled up, and, under pretence of 



LOST AMONG BERGS. 629 

drying the clothing and stores, made a camp on the 
ice. A few hours after, the weather cleared enough 
for the first time to allow a view of the distance, and 
McGary and myself climbed a berg some three hundred 
feet high for the purpose. It was truly fearful : we 
were deep in the recesses of the bay, surrounded on all 
sides by stupendous icebergs and tangled floe-pieces. 
My sturdy second officer, not naturally impressible, and 
long accustomed to the vicissitudes of whaling life, 
shed tears at the prospect. There was but one thing 
to be done : cost what it might, we must harness our 
sledges again and retrace our way to the westward. 

•St^ .M^ ^ ^ •iL. •&£. -At. 

-TT- -TP "7f* *?> 'Jv- W '7^ 

" Things grew worse and worse with us : the old 
difficulty of breathing came back again, and our feet 
swelled to such an extent that we were obliged to cut 
open our canvas boots. 

" It must be remembered that we were now in the 
open bay, in the full line of the great ice-drift to the 
Atlantic, and in boats so frail and unseaworthy as to 
require constant bailing to keep them afloat. 

" It was at this crisis of our fortunes that we saw a 
large seal floating — as is the custom of these animals 
— on a small patch of ice, and seemingly asleep. It 
was an ussuk, and so large that I at first mistook it 
for a walrus. Signal was made for the Hope to follow 
astern, and, trembling with anxiety, we prepared to 
crawl down upon him. 

" Petersen, with the large English rifle, was stationed 
in the bow, and stockings were drawn over the oars 
as mufflers. As we neared the animal, our excitement 
became so intense that the men could hardly keep 
stroke. I had a set of signals for such occasions^ 
which spared us the noise of the voice ; and when 



630 THE seal! the seal! 

about three hundred yards off, the oars were taken in, 
and we moved on in deep silence with a single scull 
astern. 

" He was not asleep, for he reared his head when we 
were almost within rifle-shot -, and to this day I can 
remember the hard, careworn, almost despairing ex- 
pression of the men's thin faces as they saw him 
move : their lives depended on his capture. 

'^ I depressed my hand nervously, as a signal for 
Petersen to fire. McGary hung upon his oar, and the 
boat slowly but noiselessly sagging ahead, seemed to 
me within certain range. Looking at Petersen I saw 
that the poor fellow was paralyzed by his anxiety, 
trying vainly to obtain a rest for his gun against the 
cut-water of the boat. The seal rose on his fore-flip- 
pers, gazed at us for a moment with frightened curi- 
osity, and coiled himself for a plunge. At that in- 
stant, simultaneously with the crack of our rifle, he 
relaxed his long length on the ice, and, at the very 
brink of the water, his head fell helpless to one side. 

"I would have ordered another shot, but no disci- 
pline could have controlled the men. With a wild 
yell, each vociferating according to his own impulse, 
they urged both boats upon the floes. A crowd of 
hands seized the seal and bore him up to safer ice. 
The men seemed half crazy : I had not realized how 
much we were reduced by absolute famine. They ran 
over the floe, crying and laughing and brandishing 
their knives. It was not five minutes before every 
man was sucking his bloody fingers or mouthing long 
strips of raw blubber. 

" This was our last experience of the disagreeable 
effects of hunger. In the words of George Stephen- 
son, ' The charm was broken, and the dogs were safe.' 



TEKRA FIRMa! 631 

The dogs I have said little about, for none of us 
liked to think of them. The poor creatures Toodla 
and Whitej had been taken with us as last resources 
against starvation. They were, as McGary worded it, 
' meat on the hoof/ and • able to carry their own fat 
over the floes.' Once, near Weary Man's Rest, I had 
been on the point of killing them ; but they had been 
the leaders of the winter's team, and we could not 
bear the sacrifice. 

a i Terra firma ! Terra firma !' How very pleasant it 
was to look upon, and with what a tingle of excited 
thankfulness we drew near it ! A little time to seek a 
cove among the wrinkled hills, a little time to ex- 
change congratulations, and then our battered boats 
were hauled high and dry upon the rocks, and our 
party, with hearts full of our deliverance, lay down 
to rest. 

" Thus it was that at one of our sleeping-halts upon 
the rocks — for we still adhered to the old routine — 
Petersen awoke me with a story. He had just seen 
and recognized a native, who, in his frail ]:ayak, was 
evidently seeking eider-down among the islands. The 
man had once been an inmate of his family. ' Paul 
Zacharias, don't you know me ? Pm Carl Petersen !' 
' No,' said the man ; ^ his wife says he's dead ;' and, 
with a stolid expression of wonder, he stared for a 
moment at the long beard that loomed at him through 
the fog, and paddled away with all the energy of 
fright. 

" Two days after this, a mist had settled down upon 
the islands which embayed us, and when it lifted we 
found ourselves rowing, in lazy time, under the shadow 
of Karkamoot. Just then a familiar sound came to 
us over the water. We had often listened to the 



632 D A N N E M A r. K E R S 

screeching of the gulls or the bark of the fox, and 
mistaken it for the ' Huk ' of the Esquimaux ; but 
this had about it an inflection not to be mistaken, for 
it died away in the familiar cadence of a ^halloo.' 

"^Listen, Petersen! oars, men!' ^What is it?' — 
and he listened quietly at first, and then, trembling, 
said, in a half whisper, 'Dannemarkers!' 

" I remember this, the first tone of Christian voice 
which had greeted our return to the world. How we 
all stood up and peered into the distant nooks ; and 
how the cry came to us again, just as, having seen 
nothing, we were doubting whether the whole was 
not a dream; and then how, with' long sweeps, the 
white ash cracking under the spring of the rowers, 
we stood for the cape that the sound proceeded from, 
and how nervously we scanned the green spots which 
our experience, grown now into instinct, told us would 
be the likely camping-ground of wayfarers. 

" By-and-by — for we must have been pulling a good 
half hour — the single mast of a small shallop showed 
itself; and Petersen, who had been very quiet arfd 
grave, burst out into an incoherent fit of crying, only 
relieved by broken exclamations of mingled Danish 
and English. * 'Tis the Upernavik oil-boat! The 
Fraulein Flaischer ! Carlie Mossyn, the assistant cooper? 
must be on his road to Kingatok for blubber. The 
Mariane (the one annual ship) has come, and Carlie 
Mossyn ' and here he did it all over again, gulp- 
ing down his words and wringing his hands. 

" It was Carlie Mossyn, sure enough. The quiet 
routine of a Danish settlement is the same year after 
year, and Petersen had hit upon the exact state of 
things. The Marine was at Proven, and Carlie Mos- 
syn had come up in the Fraulein Flaischer to get the 
year's supply of blubber from Kingatok. 




CAPE WELCOME. 




OUU FIKST KAVAK. 



AT THE SETTLEMENT. 633 

" Here we first got our cloudy vague idea of what 
had passed in the big world during our absence. The 
friction of its fierce rotation had not much disturbed 
this little outpost of civilization, and we thought it a 
sort of blunder as he told us that France and England 
were leagued with the Mussulman against the Greek 
Church. He was a good Lutheran, this assistant 
cooper, and all news with him had a theological com- 
plexion. 

" ' What of America ? eh, Petersen ? ' — and we all 
looked, waiting for him to interpret the answer. 

a i ^xnerica ? ' said Carlie ; ' we don't know much of 
that country here, for they have no whalers on the 
coast ; but a steamer and a barque passed up a fort- 
night ago, and have gone out into the ice to seek your 
party. 

" How gently all the lore of this man oozed out of 
him ! he seemed an oracle, as, with hotrtingling fin- 
gers pressed against the gunwale of the boat, we 
listened to his words. ^Sebastopol ain't taken.' 
Where and what was Sebastopol ? 

^' But ' Sir John Franklin ? ' There we were at home 
again, — our own delusive little specialty rose upper- 
most. Franklin's party, or traces of the dead which 
represented it, had been found nearly a thousand miles 
to the south of where we had been searching for them. 
He knew it ; for the priest (Pastor Kraag) had a Ger- 
man newspaper which told all about it. And so we ^out 
oars ' again and rowed into the fogs. 

" Another sleeping-halt has passed, and we have all 
washed clean at the fresh-water basins and furbished 
up our ragged furs and woolens. Kasarsoak, the snow 
top of Sanderson's Hope, shows itself above the mists 
and we hear the yelling of the dogs. Petersen had 



634 



THE WELCOME 



been foreman of the settlement, and he calls my at- 
tention, with a sort of pride, to the tolling of the 
Avorkmen's bell. It is six o'clock. We are nearing 
the end of our trials. Can it be a dream ? 

" We hugged the land bj the big harbor, turned the 
corner by the old brew-house, and, in the midst of a 
crowd of children, hauled our boats for the last time 
upon the rocks. 

"For eighty-four days we had lived in the open air. 
Our habits were hard and weather-worn. We could 
not remain within the four walls of a house without 
a distressing sense of suffocation. But we drank 
coffee that night before many a hospitable threshold^ 
and listened again and again to the hymn of wel- 
come, which, sung by many voices, greeted our deliv- 
erance." 

" On the 16th we left Upernavik in the Mariane, 
a stanch but antiquated little barque, under the com- 
mand of Captain Ammondson, who promised to drop 
us at the Shetland Islands. Our little boat, the Faith, 
which was regarded by all of us as a precious relic, 
took passage along with us. Except the furs on our 
backs and the documents that recorded our labors and 
our trials, it was all we brought back of the Advance 
and her fortunes." 




THE FAITH. 



CHAPTEE XXXVII. 
THE HAKTSTENE RELIEF EXPEDITION. 

At^ expedition for the relief of Dr. Kane and Ms 
party, commanded by Lient. Henry J. Hartstene, sailed 
from New York, May 31st, 1855, precisely two years 
after tlie departure of the Advance from the same 
port. It was sent out by authority of Congress, and 
consisted of two vessels, the bark Release and propeller 
Arctic, which penetrated northward as far as Etah, 
where the searchers met some of Dr. Kane's Esquimaux 
friends, including the "elfin youth " and ^^ stern walrus 
hunter " Myouk. 

Dr. John K. Kane, a younger brother of the explorer, 
accompanied the expedition, and prepared a graphic 
and spirited sketch thereof, which was published in 
Putnam! s Magazine for May, 1856, from which the 
following extracts are taken : — 

" Myouk was very quick in understanding us, and 
equally ready in inventing modes of conveying intelli- 
gence. Lead-pencil and paper were called into requisi- 
tion. I took out my note-book, drew a rough sketch 
of a brig, and showed it to him. He at once said 
^Dokto Kayen,' and pointed to the north. I then drew 
a reversed sketch, and pointed south. But Myouk, 
shaking his head, began to sway his body backward 
and forward, to imitate rowing ; then said Dokto 
36 635 



636 NARKATIVE OF JOHN K. KANE. 

Kayen again^ and pointed soutli. On this, I drew 
a whole fleet of boats, and invited him to point out 
how many of these he referred to. He took the pencil 
from my hand, and altered the sterns of two into sharp- 
pointed ones, and then held up two fingers, to indicate 
that there were two of such. I now drew carefully two 
whale-boats ; he made signs of approval, as much as to 
say that was tJie thing; and, incontinently squatting 
down, imitated the voice and gestures of a dog-driver, 
cracking an imaginary whip, and crying hup-hup-hup, 
at the top of his voice. After which performance ho 
laughed immoderately, and, again pointing south, said 
Dokto Kayen. ' 

" I Avas not certain as to his meaning ; but, on my 
drawing a picture of a dog-team, he went through the 
whole performance afresh, and showed the most extrav- 
agant signs of delight at being understood. We found 
out how many dog-sledges and how many men thei^ 
were of the doctor's party, in the same manner. We 
examined several other natives separately, and they all 
told the same story ; nor could Ave confuse them as to 
the number of men and boats ; they were all clear on 
that head. Nineteen, they made it, neither more nor 
less. We tried our best to make them say that the 
boats had gone north, and the vessel south ; but with- 
out success. Myouk, on one occasion, being hard 
pressed, stopped his ears, so as, at least, to secure him- 
self from being supposed to assent to what he had not 
learning or language enough to controvert. 

" At length, a bright thought struck him. He ran 
down to the beach, and got two white stones ; laid 
them on the ground, and, pointing to the floating 
masses of ice in the bay, signified to us that these rep- 
resented the ice. Next, he took a common clay pipe 



NAKKATIVE OF JOHN K. KANE. G37 

of Mr. Lovell's, and, pointing to the nortli, said, vomiak 
sooak, or big ship, 'vomiak sooak, Dokto Kayen.' He 
next pushed the pipe up between the pebbles, and then 
pressed them together till the pipe was crushed. Lastly, 
he pointed to the south, and began imitating the rowing 
of a boat, the cracking of whips, and the hup-hupping 
of a dog-driver, vociferating, at intervals, ^Dokto Kayen, 
he ! he ! he !' We tried our best to hnd out how long 
it had been since the Dokto Kayens had left them, 
for it was evident that this was their name for the 
whole party ; but we could not make them understand. 
They would only tell us that their guests had been 
with them for some time. This they did by pointing 
to the south, and then following the track of the sun 
till it reached the north ; then after stretching them- 
selves out on the ground and closing their eyes as if 
in sleep, they would again point to the south, rise up, 
go down to the lake and pretend to wash their faces. 
" We had drifted so far to the south that Lievely was 
nearer than Upernavik, and Captain Hartstene deter- 
mined to put in there. It cleared away beautifully 
towards morning, and we were all on the decks, ad- 
miring the clear water and the fantastic shapes of the 
water- washed icebergs. All hands were in high spirits, 
the gale had blown in the right d.irection, and in a 
few hours we should be in Lievely. The rocks of 
its land-locked harbor were already in sight. We were 
discussing our news by anticipation when the man in 
the crow''s nest cried out, " A brig in the harbor !" and 
the next minute, before we had time to congratulate 
each other on the chance of sending letters home, that 
she had hoisted American colors — a delicate compli- 
ment, we thought, on the part of our friends, the 
Danes. 



638 NAERATivE OF joh:?^ k. kaxe. 

" I believe our ca]3tain was about to return it, when, 
to our surprise, she hoisted another flag, the veritable 
one which had gone out with the Advance, bearing 
the name of Mr. Henry Grinnell. At the same moment, 
two boats were seen rounding the point, and pulling 
towards us. Did they contain our lost friends ? Yes ; 
the sailors had settled that. ' Those are Yankees, sir ; 
no Danes ever feathered their oars that way,' said an 
old whaler to me. 

" For those who had friends among the missing 
party, the few minutes that folloAved were of bitter 
anxiety ; for the men ip. the boats were long-bearded 
and Aveather-beaten ; they had strange, wild costumes ; 
there was no possibility of recognition. Dr. Kane, 
standing upright in the stern of the first boat, with his 
spy-glass slung round his neck, Avas the first identified ; 
then the bis: form of Mr. Brooks ; in another moment 
all hands of them Avere on board of us. 

" It Avas curious to Avatch the effects of the excite- 
ment in different people, — the intense quietude of some 
the boisterous delight of others ; hoAV one man Avould 
become intensely loquacious, another would do nothing 
but laugh, and a third Avoidd creep aAvay to some out- 
of-the-way corner, as if he Avere afraid of shoAving ho ay 
he felt. HoAV hungry they all were for neAvs, and 
hoAA^ eagerly they tore open the home letters : most of 
them, poor fellows, had pleasant tidings, and all Avere 
prepared to make the best of bad ones. We were in 
the harl)()r, Av^lth a fleet of kayaks dancing in Avelcome 
around and behind us, before the greetings Avere half 
ended, for they repeated themselves over and over 
again. 

"Our old fi-iend, Mr. Olrik, Avas Avith the ncAV 
comers, and as happy as the rest. His hospitality, 



ISTAERATIVE OF JOim K. KAlN'E. 639 

when we reached the shore, was absolutely boundless; 
and his house and table were always at our service. 
Altogether, I never passed three more delightful days 
than those last days at Lievely. Balls every night ; 
feasts and junketings every day ; and, pleasantest of 
all, those dear homedike tea-tables, with shining tea- 
urn and clear, white sugar, round which we sat, wait- 
ing for the water to boil, and talking of Russia and 
the Czar, and the world outside the Circle ; while 
Mrs. Olrik would look up from her worsted- work, and 
the children pressed round me to see the horses and 
dogs I was drawdng for them. It was enough to make 
one forget his red flannel shirt and rough Arctic rig ; 
Melville Bay and the pack seemed fables. 

" But our stay in Lievely ended. The propeller got 
up steam, and, taking our bark and the Danish brig 
Marianne in tow, steamed out of the harbor. All the 
inhabitants of the town were on the shore to see the 
last of us. Our visit had been as memorable an in- 
cident to them as to ourselves. Where ten dollars is 
a large marriage dower. Jack's liberality of exjaendi- 
ture seemed absolutely royal. There were moistened 
eyes among them, for they are essentially kind-hearted ; 
and even the roar of our cannon, in answer to the 
Danish salute, though it resounded splendidly among 
the hills, was scarcely heeded, as they stood, with 
folded arms, watching us disappear in the distance." 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
FRANKLIN'S FATE DISCOVERED. 

The fall of 1854 witnessed tlie return of the last of 
all the expeditions which had been sent from England 
to search for Franklin. The task had been a Ions: and 
disheartening one; for with the exception of the dis- 
covery in 1850, of Franklin's winter-quarters in 1845- 
46 under Beechey Island, no clue to the whereabouts 
of his ships or party had been found. Six years of 
search had, however, made known the entire geog- 
raphy of the regions of Arctic America, and with the 
exception of a small portion around King William's 
Land, every coast and harbor had been examined. 
The unsearched ground would have been more easily 
accessible to the various expeditions than many of 
the more remote regions visited by them ; but by a 
strange fatality, all the explorers turned back short of 
the goal, because they found no cairn, no trace, no 
record to induce them to push on towards it. 

But hardly had men declared the solution of the 
fate of the lost expedition a hopeless task, when, in 
October 1854, from the shores of Prince Regent's 
Inlet, appeared a traveler. Dr. Rae, bringing conclu- 
sive proofs that the unsearched region was the scene 
of the disasters which overwhelmed Franklin and his 
men. Dr. Rae, in his land expedition of 1853-4, met 

641 



642 DE. rae's discoveries. 

at Pelly Bay, on the 17tli of May 1854, a party of 
Esquimaux who had in their possession articles which 
he identified as having belonged to Franklin's party. 
The following is Dr. Kae's account of the informa- 
tion which he obtained from these Esquimaux : — 

"In the spring, four seasons back, 1850, about forty 
' white men,' were seen traveling southward over the ice 
and dragging a boat with them, by some Esquimaux, who 
were killing seals near the north shore of King William's 
Land, which is a large island, l^one of the party could 
speak the Esquimaux language intelligibly, but by signs the 
natives were made to understand that their ship, or ships, 
had been crushed by the ice, and that they were now going 
to where they expected to find deer to shoot. From the 
appearance of the men, all of whom except one officer looked 
thin, they were then supposed to be getting short of provis- 
ions, and purchased a small seal from the natives. At a later 
date the same season, but previous to the breaking up of the 
ice, the bodies of some thirty persons were discovered on the 
continent, and five on an island near it, about a long day's 
journey to the ]^. W. of a large stream, which can be no 
other than Back's Great Fish River, as its description and 
that of the low shore in the neighborhood of Point Ogle and 
Montreal Island, agree exactly with that of Sir George Back. 
Some of the bodies had been buried, (probably those of the 
first victims of famine,) some were in a tent or tents, others 
under the boat, which had been turned over to form a shelter, 
and several lay scattered about in different directions. , Of 
those found on tlie island, one was supposed to have been an 
officer, as he had a telescope strapped over his shoulders, and 
his double-barrelled gun lay underneath him. 

*' From the mutilated state of many of the corpses, and 
the contents of tlie kettles, it is evident that our wretched 
countrymen had been driven to the last resource — cannibal- 
ism — as a means of prolonging existence. 

" There appeared to have been an abundant stock of ammu- 
nition, as the powder was emptied in a heap on the ground 
by the natives out of the kegs or cases containing it; and a 



ANDERSOlSr's EXPEDITIOIN". 643 

quantity of ball and shot was found below bigh-water mark, 
having probably been left on the ice close to the beach. 
There must have been a number of w^atches, compasses, tele- 
scopes, guns, (several double-barrelled,) &c., all of which 
appear to have been broken up, as I saw pieces of those dif- 
ferent articles with the Esquimaux, together with some sil- 
ver ^spoons and forks. I purchased as many as I could get. 
A list of the most important of these I enclose, witli a rough 
sketch of the crests and initials on the forks and spoons. 

. "None of the Esquimaux with whom I conversed had seen 
the ' whites,' nor had they ever been at the place where the 
bodies were found, but had their information from those who 
had been there, and who had seen the party when traveling." 

The next season, 1855, Mr. Anderson, an oificer of 
the Hudson's Bay Company, descended the Fisli River • 
but, although traces Vv^ere found to prove that some 
portions of the crews of the Erebus and Terror bad 
actually landed on the banks of that river, and traces 
of them existed up as far as Franklin's Rapids, no 
additional information v^as obtained by the party. 

In 1856, Lady Franklin petitioned the Government 
to make a final effort to find the lost ships^ and sug- 
gested that the Resolute, v^hich had recently been pre- 
sented by the United States, might be devoted to the 
purpose. A memorial to the same effect, signed by 
the leading scientific men, explorers and naval officers 
of England, accompanied the petition. It was not 
until April 1857 that the decisive answer was given, 
that after so many failures, the Government did not 
feel justified in sending out more brave men to encoun- 
ter fresh dangers in a cause which was viewed as hope- 
less. 

Lady Franklin now determined to send out another 
private expedition, and for that purpose purchased 
and refitted the steam yacht Fox. Capt. F. S. McClin- 



644 



THE FOX EXPEDITIO]^. 



tock, who had seen much service in the frozen reahn, 
willingly accepted, without pay, the command. He had 
experienced officers and a crew of twenty-one gallant 
men. Carl Petersen, a Dane who had served with Pen- 
ny and Kane, hastened from his home at Copenha- 
gen, where he had been only six days after an absence of 
a year, to join the expedition as interpreter. Various 
circumstances combined to retard the departure of 
the Fox, and it was not till July 1857 that she left 
the shores of merry England behind her and started 
on her long and perilous voyage. 

Melville Bay was reached about the middle of Au- 
gust. Here the Fox was beset by the ice and frozen 
in, and was not released until the next April. Mean- 
time she had drifted in the midst of a slow-marching 
pack which ever rolls from the Pole to the Equator, 
a distance of twelve hundred miles to the south. Start- 
ing northward again on the 7th of May, from Hol- 
steinberg, Greenland, the Fox reached Beechey Island 
by the middle of August. Here McClintock set up a 
marble tablet to the memory of the lost explorers. 
This monument had been constructed in New York 
City at the request of Lady Franklin, under the direc- 
tion of Mr. Grinnell, and was taken to Greenland by 
the Hartstein Expedition, for the purpose of beino- 
erected at Beechey Island. But as Lieut. Hartstein 
did not visit that locality the tablet was left at God- 
Iiavn, and there found by McClintock, who carried it 
to its destination. It was placed upon the raised 
flagged square, in tlie centre of which stands the cen- 
otaph recording the names of those who pei'ished in 
Belcher's Expedition, and near a small tablet which 
liad been erected to the memory of Bellot. The 
inscription was as follows : — 



franklin's monument. 645 

to the memory of 
FRANKLIN", 
CROZIER, FITZJAMES, 

AND ALL THEIR 

GALLANT BROTHER OFFICERS AND FAITHFUL 

COMPANIONS WHO HAVE SUFFERED AND PERISHED 

IN THE CAUSE OF SCIENCE AND 

THE SERVICE OF THEIR COUNTRY. 

THIS TABLET 

IS ERECTED NEAR THE SPOT WHERE 

THEY PASSED THEIR FIRST ARCTIC 

WINTER, AND WHENCE THEY ISSUED 

FORTH TO CONQUER DIFFICULTIES OR 

TO DIE. 

IT COMMEMORATES THE GRIEF OF THEIR 

ADMIRING COUNTRYMEN AND FRIENDS, 

AND THE ANGUISH, SUBDUED BY FAITH, 

OF HER WHO HAS LOST, IN THE HEROIC 

LEADER OF THE EXPEDITION, THE MOST. 

DEVOTED AND AFFECTIONATE OP 

HUSBANDS. 

" AND SO HE BRINGETH THEM UNTO THE 
HAVEN WHERE THEY WOULD BE." 

1855. 

This stone has been entrusted to be affixed in its place by the Officers and 
Crew of the American Expedition, commanded by Lieut. H. J. Hartstein, in 
search of Dr. Kane and his companions. 

This Tablet having been left at Disco by the 
American Expedition, which was unable to 
reach Beechey Island, in 1855, was put on 
board the Discovery Yacht Fox, and is now 
set up here by Captain McClintock, R. N., 
commanding the final expedition of search 
for ascertaining the fate of Sir John Franklin 
and his companions, 1858. 

After replenisliiiig liis stock of provisions from the 
stores left by the previous expedition, McClintock 
pushed on, and turning into Peel Sound on the west 
side of Somerset, was brought up, August 17th, by 
fixed ice at a point twenty-five miles south of Cape 
Walker. Bafiled, but not disheartened, he imme- 
diately retraced his steps, and passing down Prince 



646 WINTER IN BELLOT STRAIT. 

Regent's Inlet, arrived on the 20tli at the eastern 
entrance of Ballot Strait. 

The scene in that strait was enough to daunt men 
less accustomed to such dangers. On either side were 
precipitous walls of granite, topped by mountains 
covered with snow, while to and fro, in the space 
between them, the ice was grinding and churning 
under the influence of a fierce tide. Like a terrier at 
a rat-hole, the staunch Fox waited for an opportunity 
to run the gauntlet through this strait into the ^vestern 
sea which led to King AVilliam's Land. On the 6th 
of September they succeeded in reaching the western 
entrance to the strait, but were then stopped by a 
belt of ice which stretched across the path and was 
held fast by a group of small islands. 

The winter of 1858-9 now set in, and all hope of 
reaching the open water had to be abandoned, although 
it was separated from the Fox only by an ice-field six 
miles wide. Here w^as passed an unusually cold and 
stormy winter ; and the resources of Boothia yielded 
them in fresh food only eight reindeer, two bears, and 
eighteen seals. In February, several sledge parties 
were sent out in different directions; McClintock, 
who went southerly, met forty-five Esquimaux, and 
during a sojourn of four days among them learned 
that " several years ago a ship was crushed by the 
ice off the north shore of King William's Land ; that 
her people landed and went away to the Great Fish 
River, where they died." These natives had a quan- 
tity of wood from a boat left by the " starving white 
men " on the Great River. 

On the 2d of April, Captain McClintock, Captain 
Young, and Lieutenant Ilobson, each with two sledges, 
started from the Fox to search for the lost ships. 



TIDINGS OF THE EXPEDITIOIS^ 647 

Young went westerly to Prince of Wales Land and 
made a long journey. McClintock and Hobson went 
together as far as the Magnetic Pole, and on the way 
there, learned from some natives that the second ves- 
sel had been drifted- on shore by the ice in the fall of 
the same year when the other ship was crushed. 

Leaving Hobson to search the west coast of King 
William's Land, McClintock with Petersen undertook 
to go down the east side thereof, direct to the Fish 
River. On his way thither, he met a party of Esqui- 
maux who had been, in 1857, at the wreck spoken of 
by their countrymen, and who had numerous articles 
taken therefrom. An intelligent old woman said it 
was in the fall of the year that the ship was forced 
on shore ; that the starving white men had fallen on 
their way to the Great Kiver, and that their bodies 
were found by her countrymen in the following 
winter. She said that on board the' wrecked ship 
there was one dead white man, and there had been 
many books as well as other things ; but all had been 
taken away, or destroyed, when she was last at the 
wreck. The destruction of one ship and the wreck 
of the other appeared, so far as McClintock could 
ascertain, to have occurred after their abandonment. 
No Esquimaux that were met had ever before seen 
a living white man. 

After meeting this party, McClintock pushed on to 
Montreal Island, in the estuary of the Great Fish 
River ; but he found nothing more than Anderson had 
reported ; and in a careful search of the shores about 
Point Ogle, and Barrow Island, he was equally unsuc- 
cessful. Returnino; to Kino; William's Land he now 
struck along its south-western shores, in the hope of 
discovering the wreck spoken of by the natives ; but 



648 McClintock's discovekies. 

could see no signs thereof. When ten miles south of 
Cape Ilerschel, he came upon a human skeleton 
around which were fragments of European clothing. 
It lay exactly as the famished seamen were said to 
have fallen, with its head toward Fish Eiver and its 
face to the ground. At Cape Herschel, McClintock 
visited the cairn which Simpson had erected in 1839, 
and hoped to find therein some record ; but the cairn 
had evidently been ov^erhauled and plundered by 
Esquimaux, and the record, if there had been any, 
carried off. 

In the meantime Hobson had made more import- 
ant discoveries. After separating from McClintock 
near the Magnetic Pole on the 28th of April, he 
proceeded to Cape Felix, the most northern 23oint of 
King William's Land. Here was found a large cairn 
and three tents, with clothes, blankets and other 
articles, but no records. Two smaller cairns were 
found along the coast, but they contained nothing of 
much importance. 

On the Gth of May Hobson reached Point Victory 
— so named by Sir James Koss who visited it in 1830. 
It is on the western coast of King WilliaDi's Land, 
some forty miles south of Cape Felix. Here was a 
large cairn ; and among some loose stones which had 
fallen from its top was found a tin case enclosing a 
record which gave the first authentic information as 
to the fate of the lost expedition. This important 
document was one of those blanks furnished to explor- 
ing ships by the British Admiralty for the purpose 
of being thrown overboard at sea in order to ascertain 
the set of the current, etc., on which is printed in six 
languages a request that the finder will note time and 
place where it was found, and forward it to the 




RELICS OF THE LOST EXPLORERS. 




DISCOVERY OF FRANKLIN'S CAIRN. 



THE CAIllN AT POINT VICTORY. 649 

nearest Britisli consul. Written on this paper were 
two distinct records made at different dates. Tlie 
first one, occupying the blank space left for such a 
purpose, was as follows : — 

28th of May, j H. M. Ships Erebus and Terror wintered in 

1847. ( the ice in Lat. 70^ 5 ' I^. Long. 98^ 23 ' W. 

Having wintered in 1846-7 at Beechey Island, in Lat. 74®. 
43' 28/' ]Sr., Long. 91^ 39' 15'' W., after having ascended 
Wellington Channel to Lat. 77^ and returned by the west 
side of Cornwalhs Island. 

Sir John Franklin commanding the expedition. All well. 

Party consisting of 2 officers and 6 men left the ships on 
Monday, 24th of May, 1847. 





^^/M/^^ iu^^j£-. 



This record had been written by Lieut. Gore, sign- 
ed by himself and Voeux, and left by them while on 
an excursion, at a point four miles north of where it 
was found. There is an error in it when it states 
that the winter passed at Beechey Island was that of 
1846-7. It should be 1845-6, as the other dates 
plainly show. 

Before a year had passed, Graham Gore was dead, 
and around the margin of the paper on which were 
his words of hope and promise, other hands had 
written the following : — 

April 25, 1848, H. M. ships Terror and Erebus were de- 
serted on the 22d April, 5 leagues E". JST. W. of this, hav- 
ing been beset since 12tli of September, 1846. The offi- 
cers and crews, consisting of 105 souls, under the com- 
mand of Captain F. R. M. Crozier, landed here in Lat.. 



650 



CEOZIER S RECOED. 



69^ 37/ 42//, Long. 98^ 41'. This paper was found by 
Lient. Irving, under the cairn supposed to have been built by 
Sir James Eoss in 1831, four miles to the northward, where 
it had been deposited by the late commander Gore, in June, 
1847. Sir James Eoss' pillar has not, however, been found, 
and the paper has been transferred to this position, which is 
that in which Sir J. Eoss' pillar was erected. Sir John 
FrankHn died on the 11th June, 1847, and the total loss 
by deaths in the expedition has been to this date, 9 officers 
and 15 men. 



/ 



^^.^^^ ^j^^A^u^ ^^5^'^''"^^Ji5 



c^<^^Z 



Scattered around this cairn were large quantities 
of clothing and articles of all kinds, as if these men, 
aware that they were retreating for their lives, had 
there abandoned everything which they considered 
superfluous. 

Continuing his search down the western coast, 
Lieut. Hohson, when in lat. 69^^ 9^ about forty miles 
below Point Victory, noticed what appeared to be 
two posts rising above the snow. On examining 
them closely, he found that they were the awning 
stanchions of a buried boat, and on clearing away the 
.snow, foimd in it that which tilled the beholders with 
awe— portions of two human skeletons. One lay in 
the bow of the boat, and liad evidently been disturbed 
by wolves or other animals; the other waa enveloped 



A BUEIED BOAT. 651 

with clothes and furs, and lay near the stern. Close 
beside it were found five watches; and two double- 
harreled guns — one barrel of each loaded and cocked 
— standing muzzle upwards against the boat's side, 
just as they were placed eleven years previously. 

A Bible was also found, and a few religious books, 
one of which — " Christian Melodies " — bore on its 
title page an inscription from the donor to G. G., 
(Graham Gore.). There was also a large quantity 
of clothing, an abundance of ammunition, some tea, 
chocolate and tobacco, and a great variety of articles 
which modern sledge- travelers in these regions would 
consider a useless dead weight. Silver spoons and 
forks were also found, eight of which bore Franklin's 
crest, and others the initials of nine of his officers. 
Fuel was at hand in the shape of a drift-tree lying 
near by on the beach. Nothing in the shape of 
records or journals could be discovered. 

The boat was twenty-eight feet long, seven and a 
half feet wide, and was mounted on a heavy oak 
sledge which was headed north. McClintock, who 
came upon this boat a few days after Hobson found 
it, estimated the total weight of the sledge and its 
load at 1,400 lbs ; and is of opinion that it was drawn 
where it was found by a party who were returning 
to the ship, probably for provisions, and that 
they were unable to drag it any further. 

From Cape Herschel to the western extremity of 
King William's Land, the traces of the natives were 
so numerous as to have completely effaced those of the 
unfortunate castaways ; but from this extreme point 
to Cape Felix the beach was strewn with signs of 
their miserable condition, like a rocky shore after 
some disastrous ^vreck. 
37 . 



652 EETUEN OF THE FOX. 

By the 1st of July 1859, all the search-parties had 
returned to the Fox. The homeward voyage was 
begun on the 9th of August, and ended on the 21st 
of September. Three men of the expedition had died 
from disease and accident during its absence from 
England. Numerous memorials of the lost expedition 
were brought home, some of which have been de- 
scribed as follows : — 

" In tlie first case is the ' ensign ' of one of the ships, re- 
duced ahnost to shreds, but still preserving its colors, and 
reminding the spectators of the many cheerless days upon 
which it must have fluttei*ed sadly, but still proudly, from 
the mast of the ice-bound vessel. In a corner of the same 
case is also a thin tin cylinder, stained and time-worn. The 
casual spectator would hardly notice it, but it stands first in 
importance of all that has been recovered, for it contains the 
record of the deatli of Sir John Franklin — that happy deatli 
which saved our brave veteran all the subsequent horrors of 
the journey to the Fisli River. Further on are the rude 
spear-heads into which the Esquimaux had fashioned the iron 
they obtained from the wreck; and a box-wood two-foot 
rule, whitened with exposure, but with the figures on it all 
as bright as the first day. This was, of course, the property 
of the carpenter, who, it would appear, had, even when 
starting on his dread journey, not forgotten the implement of 
his trade. In the same case is a relic which will arrest the 
eye of many a passer-by. It is the remains of a silk neck- 
tie, including the bow, as carefully and elaborately tied as if 
the poor wearer had been making a wedding toilette. This, 
which was taken from the neck of a skeleton, is supposed to 
liave belonged to the ship's steward. 

" There are also various articles of plate, the greater por- 
tion of which is marked with Sir John Franklin's device, and 
two pocket chronometers in excellent preservation. A small 
silver watch, maker's name ^A. Myers, London,' probably 
belonged to some young mate or midshipman ; and a worm- 
eaten roll of ])aper, upon which the single word ' Majesty ' 



RELICS OF FEANKLIIS". 653 

remains, was possibly the mucli-prized warrant of some stout 
boatswain or quartermaster. There is a little amethyst seal, 
in perfect preservation, and goggles and snow-veils, to pro- 
tect the eyes from the dazzling whiteness of the polar snow. 
Two double-barrelled guns, covered with rust, are placed far 
in on the table. They still contain the charges which were 
placed in them by hands which have long since lost their 
cunning. The books recovered are very few ; they would, 
of course, succumb early to the rigors of exposure, — but 
there is still well preserved a small edition of the ' Yicar of 
Wakefield,' some religious poetry, and a French Testament, 
on the fly-leaf of which is written, in a delicate female hand, 
^ From your attached (the appellation is obliterated) S. M. P.' 
The open medicine-chest contains all its bottles and prepara- 
tions very little injured, and a little cooking machine has the 
fuel arranged, the sticks thrust through the bars ready for 
ignition, and lucifer matches at the side, as it might have 
been prepared over night for the morning cooking. It would 
be impossible to exaggerate the interest and importance of 
all these simple memorials ; they tell a tale that will find its 
way to every heart." 

From the meagre information obtained by tbe 
various searchers for Franklin, have been drawn the 
outlines of a connected account of his expedition 
and its fate. The Erebus and Terror were last seen 
in July 1845, in Baffin's Bay. (See Chapter XXIL) 
Passing thence into Lancaster Sound, they reached 
Beechey Island and ascended "Wellington Channel to 
lat. 77^. In returning southerly they sailed around 
Cornwallis Island, and under the friendly shelter of 
Beechey Island reposed from their arduous labors. 
The Polar winter came in upon them like a giant. 
A shroud of snow enveloped the region, save where 
sharp and clear against the hard blue sky stood out 
the gaunt mountain precipices of North Devon and 
the dark and frowning cliffs of Beechey Island — cliffs 
too steep for even snow-flakes to hang upon. 



654 THE STOKY OF THE EXPEDITIOI^. 

The tale of energetic battle Avitli cold, jjiivation, 
and festering monotony lias been often told ; why 
repeat that the officers and men under Franklin in 
their first winter within the Frozen Zone, as nobly 
bore the one and cheerfully combatted the other? 
The ruins and traces left behind them all attest it. 
The observatory, with its double embankment of 
earth and stones, its neat finish, and the lavish expen- 
diture of labor in pavement and pathway ; the shoot- 
ing gallery under the cliff, the seats formed of stones, 
the remains of ]3leasant picnics in empty bottles and 
meat-tins strewed about: the elaborate cairn upon 
the north point of Beechey— a pyramid eight feet 
high, and at least six feet long on each side of the 
Iba'^e— constructed of old meat-tins filled with gravel ; 
all tell the same tale of manful anxiety for physical 
employment to distract the mind from suffering and 

solitude. 

But at lengtb darkness and winter pass away, 
sunlight and spring return, and pale faces recover 
their natural hue. The graves of three of the crew 
who perished during the long night are paved round 
by their messmates, and shells from the bay are 
arranged above them; while Franklin selects, at the 
request of his men, epitaphs whicli appeal to the 
hearts of all—" Choose ye this day whom ye will 
serve," etc. 

The sun has ceased to set, night is as the day, the 
snow has melted ; the yards are crossed, rigging set 
up, sails are bent, and all signs indicate that the 
disruption of the frozen surface of the sea is at hand. 
The day of release arrives; the cracks which radiate 
over tlie floes gradually widen, then close again with 
heavy nips. Presently the look-out man gives a sig- 



THE STORY OF THE EXPEDITION^. 655 

nal tliat the ice is in motion. A loud hurrali wel- 
comes tlie joyful news — a race to witness tlie break-up 
of the ice. It moves indeed. The floe heaves and 
cracks, now presses fearfully in one direction and 
now in another. A dull moaning is heard as if the 
very ice cried for mercy, and then, with a sharp report, 
the mass is shivered into fragments. Water shows 
in all directions, and the next day the ships are 
sawed out, sails are set, and a cruise to the westward 
begun. 

At Cape Walker the ships come to anchor. An 
impenetrable ice-stream, drifting easterly from Parry's 
Sound, renders further progress in that direction 
impossible. Southward stretches a promising chan- 
nel leading direct to the American continent; and 
down this channel — Peel Sound — the expedition 
bears away. On the eastern hand rise the steep 
black cliffs of North Somerset, cut here and there 
with deep cleft and snow-filled ravine. On the west- 
ern side, the sandstone cliffs and the sheltered coves 
of Prince of Wales' Land, have donned their brightest 
looks, and siren-like, lure the discoverer, by many an 
unexplored bay and fiord, to delay awhile and visit 
them. It may not be ; the Erebus and Terror press 
on, for is not Cape Herschel of King William's Land 
and the American continent ahead — are they not 
fast nearing it ? Once there, will they not have dis- 
covered the long-sought passage ? 

Two degrees of latitude are passed over ; the 
passage contracts ; for awhile it looks as if they w^ere 
in a cul-de-sac ; islands locked in with one another, 
excite some anxiety for a channel. The two ships 
are close to each other, the eager ofiicers and men 
crowd gunwale and tops. Hepburn Island bars the 



656 THE STORY OF THE EXPEDITION. 

way ; they round it. Hurrah, hurrah ! the path 
opens before them, the lands on either hand recede, 
a sea, an open sea, is before them. They dip their 
ensigns, and cheer each other in friendly congratula- 
tion ; joy, joy ! another one hundred miles, and King 
William's Island will rise in view. The prize is now 
wdthiu their grasp, whatever be the cost. 

The sailor's prayer for open water is, however, only 
granted in a limited sense, for when the coast of 
Prince of Wales' Island is lost to view, and they are 
no longer shielded by land to the west, the great ice- 
stream from Melville Island again falls ujDon it. The 
ships pass Bellot Strait, and advance down the 
edge of that ice-stream as far as latitude 71^ ; then 
they must enter the pack and go with it to the south- 
west. Had they not already passed over two hun- 
dred of the three hundred miles between Cape 
Walker and Cape Herschel ? Were they the men to 
flinch from a struggle for tlie remaining hundred 
miles ? 

That struggle commenced as the winter closed in, 
and just as King William's Land was in sight the 
Erebus and Terror were about twelve miles north of 
Cape Felix. More dangerous and unpromising quar- 
ters could hardly have fallen to their lot. Six- 
teen years previously Ross had stood uj)on Cape Felix 
in the month of May, and observed with astonishment 
the fearful nature of the oceanic ice which was 
pressed upon the shores, and had in some places been 
driven inward lialf a mile. 

Tlie second winter passes away and when May 
comes in, Gore and Voeux, with six men, leave the 
Erebus on an excursion southward. In the cairn 
built by Ross at Point Victory they deposit a record, 





FUNERAL OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 



THE STORY OF THE EXPEDITIOIST. 659 

and in a week more stand on Cape Herscliel ; then, 
after gazing on the shores of America, they hasten 
back to carry the glad tidings that the ships are 
really in the direct channel leading to those waters 
and shores traversed by Franklin in former years, 
and that the long-sought passage is at last discovered. 

Alas ! why do their shipmates meet the flushed 
travelers with sorrow imprinted on pale countenances ? 
Why, as they cheer at the glad tidings the}^ bring, 
does the tear suffuse the eye of these rough and hardy 
men ? Their chief lies on his death-bed ; a long 
career of honor and of worth is drawing to its close. 
The shout of victory, which cheered the last hours of 
Nelson and of Wolfe, rang not less heartily round 
the bed of the gallant Franklin, and lit up that kind 
eye with its last gleam of triumph. Like another 
Moses, he fell when his work was accomplished with 
the great object of his life in view. 

A toll for the brave — the drooping ensigns of Eng- 
land trail only half-mast ; officers and men with sad 
faces walk lightly as if they feared to disturb the 
mortal remains of him they love so much. The sol- 
emn peal of the ship's bell reverberates amongst the 
masses of solid ice ; a group of affectionate followers 
stand around a huge chasm in the ice, and Fitzjames 
reads the service for the dead over the grave of Frank- 
lin. 

The summer wears away, and at last the ice-stream 
again moves slowly to the south. Ten miles, twenty 
miles thirty miles are accomplished, though not a foot 
of open water has been seen. Then the new ice 
begins to form, the drift diminishes, and Avhen fifteen 
miles north of Cape Victory and only ninety miles 
from the continent the ships are again stationary, and 



660 THE STOEY OF THE EXPEDITIO]^. 

the winter of 1847-48 closes around tliese forlorn and 
now desperate men. 

The sun of 1848 rises again upon the imprisoned 
expedition, and never did it look down on a sadder 
sight. Nine officers and twelve men have perished 
during the past winter ; the survivors one hundred 
and five in number, a wan, half-starved crew, must 
leave the ships and escape for tlieir lives. Sledges 
are loaded with such articles as they suppose may be 
of use. Two IsLYg-e boats are ri2:o:ed on sledo:es, and 
in them the sick and disabled are placed. Care is 
taken to have plenty of guns, powder, and shot, for 
provisions are scarce, and they hope to find deer in 
the region of the Great Fish Kiver. 

On the 22d of April, 1848, the men fell into the 
drag-ropes of their sledges and boats ; the colors were 
hoisted on the ships, three cheers were given, and 
without a blush at deserting the Erebus and Terror, 
Crozier and Fitzjames lead the w^ay to the nearest 
land named Cape Victory. It took three days to travel 
these fifteen miles, and already the sad conviction was 
peeping upon them that they had over-estimated 
their physical strength. Around the large cairn at 
Point Victory the shivering men cast away every- 
thing that could be spared. Unrolling the record 
left here in the previous year by Lieut. Gore, Fitz- 
james wrote around its margin those few but graphic 
words which tell all we shall ever know of this last 
page in their lii story. 

In spite of frost-bites and fatigue the party presses 
on. They must keep moving southward or their ])ro- 
visions will be gone before they reach the continent. 
Day by day they grow weaker and weaker under the 
toil of dragging their sledges and disabled comrades 



THE STORY OF THE EXPEDITION. 661 

tliroHgli the deep snow and over the rugged ice, and 
at last, when half way between Point Victory and 
Cape Herschel it becomes apparent that if any are to 
be saved there must be a division of the parties and 
that the sick and weak must stay behind or return 
to the ships. One of the large boats is here turned 
with her bow northward, some stay with it, and all 
that is known of their fate is, that years afterward 
the boat was found buried in the snow with two 
skeletons therein ; and that the wandering Esquimaux 
found another skeleton in one of the ships. 

The stronger portion of the divided crews pushed 
southward and reached the cairn on Cape Herschel ; 
no one had visited it since it was erected by Dease 
and Simpson in 1839. Ten miles further on at least 
one of them died, " with his face to the ground and his 
head toward Fish River ; " and little else is known of 
this " forlorn hope " than the information collected 
from the Esquimaux by Dr. Eae, and given at com- 
mencement of this chapter. It is probable that the 
survivors, under Fitzjames, pushed on to |)erish in the 
wilds of the Hudson's Bay Territory. Capt. Hall, 
however, after visiting King William's Land, conclu- 
ded that none of the party ever reached the conti- 
nent. The results of his searches for Franklin are 
given in another chapter. 

The point at which the fatal imprisonment of the 
Erebus and Terror in 1846 took place, was only 
ninety miles from the limit reached by Dease and 
Simpson. Ninety miles more of open water, and 
Franklin and his heroic followers would not only have 
won the prize for which they had so bravely strug- 
gled, but have gained their homes to enjoy their w^ell- 
merited honors. Such, however, was not to be the case. 



662 



THE STORY OF THE EXPEDITION. 



" They were to discover the great highway between 
the Pacific and the Atlantic. It was given them to 
win for their country a discovery for which she had 
risked her sons and lavishly spent her wealth through 
many centuries ; but they were to die in accomplish- 
ing their last great earthly task ; and, still more 
strange, but for the energy and devotion of the wife 
of their chief and leader, it would in all probability 
never have been known, that they were indeed the 
first discoverers of the North-west Passaire." The 
shores along which they fied are sacred to their mem- 
ory, and bear the names of Franklin, Crozier, Fitz- 
james. Little, Irving, Gore, Hodgson, Fairholm, and 
other members of the lost expedition. 




CHAPTER XXXIX. 
AECTIC SIBERIA AND ITS EXPLORERS. 

Siberia, the entire northern part of Asia, was for 
centuries the battle-field of the Russians and Tartars, 
and its exploration may be dated from the period 
when the Russians freed themselves from the yoke of 
their conquerors. In 1580, a body of wandering Cos- 
sacks, searching for sable furs, crossed the Ural Moun- 
tains, and found a Tartar kingdom of which Sibir 
was the capital. A struggle ensued, the Russian 
power spread, and in less than one hundred years a 
few Cossack hunters had, by their exertions and the 
advantage which the possession of fire-arms gave 
them, added to Russia a territory larger in extent 
than all Europe. 

Siberia is rich in mines, fossil ivory, and sable, but 
it is chiefiy noted as being the great Russian peniten- 
tiary, to which criminals and all who have fallen 
under the displeasure of the government are banished. 
Many a wretched exile, the victim of state intrigues 
and despotism, has here dragged out a miserable 
existence; and hundreds of unhappy Poles, whose 
greatest crime was a devotion to their oppressed 
native land, have been perpetually banished to these 
dreary regions. The worst criminals are sent to the 
mines ; the other exiles are furnished with small farm- 

663 



664 SIBERIAN EXILES. 

ing ontiits and left to their own resources. They 
have contributed greatly to the improvement and 
civilization of the country, and many of them are 
contented, happy, and even wealthy in their compul- 
sory homes. 

The di,scovery of the shores of the Polar ocean, from 
Bering's Strait westerly to Nova Zembla (145 degrees 
of longitude) is due to the Russians. Those shores 
are, perhaps, the most desolate on the whole Arctic 
circle. The Siberian rivers — the Obi, the Yenisei, the 
Lena, the Indlgirka and Kolyma — rise in the Altai 
mountains, and flo^v in their upper courses, through 
forests of tall trees. But, before thej^ reach the Polar 
ocean, they traverse a drear)^^ region of frozen swamp, 
wdiich is bai'ely habitable, called the tundra. Here 
the land is frozen for many feet below the surface. 
The rivers, during times of flood, bring down vast 
quantities of uprooted trees, which line their banks 
in immense masses, and are eventually carried into 
the Polar sea, to be drifted away with the current 
w^hicli flow^s from east to west along the Siberian 
coast. 

The endeavors of the Russians to double the extreme 
northern points of Siberia — Capes Taimyr and Chel- 
yuskin, the latter in 77'' 30' N., — have hitherto 
been unsuccessful. The Russians, in very early times, 
constantly went from Archangel to the mouth of the 
Obi, creeping along between the land and ice in the sea 
of Kara, and usually hauling their boats, or lodlas^ 
across the istlimus between Kara Bay and the Gulf of 
the Obi. In the last century several expeditions 
were sent by the Russian Government in the same 
direction, and vessels reached the mouth of the 
Pyasina, on the west side of the northern point of 



VOYAGE OF DESHNEF. 665 

Siberia, and tlie Khatauga on the east side. But no 
navigator has ever doubled that most northern cape 
of the Asiatic continent. 

From the mouth of the Lena eastward, vessels have 
frequently reached the river Kolyma, but the doubling 
of the capes still farther east has been attended with 
great difficulty. Nijni Kolymsk, near the mouth of 
the Kolyma, was founded in 1644, by a Cossack 
named Michael Staduchin ; and, in 1648, another Cos- 
sack named Simon Deshnef equipped an expedition 
there, consisting of three small craft which were 
broad, flat-bottomed, decked vessels, about seventy feet 
long, with both sails and oars. He rounded Cape 
Chelagskoi, passed through the strait afterwards 
named after Bering the explorer, and reached the 
Gulf of Anadyr. Most of his men died of hunger; 
but Deshnef himself succeeded in establishing a wal- 
rus fishery in the Anadyr. 

Peter the Great desired that the whole northern 
coast of Siberia should be explored by sea, and he 
died a few days after giving his instructions to 
Captain Vitus Bering with his own hand, in 1725. 
Bering was a Dane, in the Bussian service. He was 
despatched from St. Petersburg to the furthest point 
of Siberia with sailors and shipwrights, and two 
vessels were built at Okhotsk and in Kamchatka, the 
" Gabriel " and the " Fortuna." In July, 1728, he sailed 
from the river of Kamchatka, and examined the coast 
for some distance to the northward, ascertaining the 
existence of a strait between Asia and America. In 
September, 1740, Bering sailed again from Okhotsk, 
in a vessel called the " St. Paul," with another in com- 
pany, called the '' St. Peter," commanded by Lieut.. 
Chirikof. George W. Steller embarked with Bering 



Q66 BERIN"a's BISCOYEEIES. 

as naturalist of the expedition. The tv^^o ships sepa- 
rated soon after sailing: and did not meet ao;ain. 

In June, 1741, they discovered the American coast, 
and that magnificent peak, named by Bering Mount St. 
Elias. The Aleutian Islands were explored, but 
scurvy broke out amongst the crews ; Bering also 
was attacked by it, and in November his ship was 
wrecked on an island which was named after the ill- 
fated discoverer himself, Avho was carried on shore, 
and placed in a sort of pit or cavern dug in the side 
of a sand-hill. Here he was almost buried alive, for 
the sand was continually rolling down, and he 
requested that it might not be removed, as it kept 
him warm. In this miserable condition poor Bering 
died, December 8th, 1741. 

Steller was naturally anxious to procure supplies 
of animal food for his scurvy-stricken patients, and 
he carefully examined into the natural history of the 
island. He attributed the cure of those who recov- 
ered, to the flesh of the sea-otter. Thirty of the crew 
died on the island, and the forty-five survivors escaped 
to Kamchatka in a little vessel ])uilt from the wreck 
of the " St. Paul." The most remarkable and inter- 
esting event of this voyage was the discovery by 
Steller of a rare and solitary species of manatee or 
sea-cow, called Mytina Stelleres. It has since been 
hunted and probably exterminated, for no specimen 
has been seen for more than seventy years. This 
creature had a sort of bark an inch thick, composed 
of fibres or tubes perpendicular on the skin, and so 
hard that steel could penetrate it ^vith difiiculty. It 
lived on sea-weed. 

In 1734, Lieut. Muravief sailed from Archangel 
towards the river Obi, but was stoj)ped by the ice 



Chelyuskin's exploeatioi^s. 66t 

in tlie sea of Kara. In 1738, however, Lieut's. Malgyn 
and SliurakoiF doubled the promontory with great 
difficulty and reached the mouth of the Obi. The 
next step was to sail from the Obi to the Yenisei. 
This was effected in the same year by Lieut. Koskelef 
In the same memorable year for Siberian exploration, 
the pilot Menin sailed from the Yenisei towards the 
Lena, but was stopped by the ice at the mouth of the 
Pyasina, and returned unsuccessful. 

Three years before, in 1735, Lieut. Pronchishchef 
made a similar attempt from the eastern side. He 
sailed down the Lena from Yakutsk, accompanied by 
his wife, but was hampered by ice, which only left a 
passage of two hundred yards along the coast, and 
was at last obli<2:ed to winter at the mouth of the 
Olenek. The following year he reached the mouth 
of the Khatanga, and pushed beyond it, but found 
himself at last closely beset near Cape Chelyuskin, his 
extreme northern point being 77^ 25'. He and his 
wife died at the winter-quarters, near the mouth of the 
Olenek, and the command devolved upon Lieut. 
Chelyuskin who returned. In May, 1740, Lieut. 
Laptef found fixed and impenetrable ice in the same 
place, and returned convinced of the impossibility of 
sailing round Cape Taimyr. But in 1742, Chelyuskin 
reached the northernmost point of the continent in 
sledges, in latitude 77^ 34' IST., doubled it, and 
returned to the mouth of the Taimyr. This cape is 
now known as Cape Chelyuskin. 

After Bering's Strait, the most important discov- 
ery of the Bussians during the last century was that 
of the Islands of New Siberia in the Polar ocean, 
opposite the coast between the mouths of the Lena 
and Indigirka. In March, 1770, a merchant named 



G68 THE NEW SIBERIA ISLANDS. 

Liakliof saw a laro:e herd of reindeer comino- over tliet 
ice from tlie north, whicli induced liim to start witb. 
sledges early in April, to trace the tracks they had 
left. After a journey of fifty miles over the ice, he 
discovered three large islands, and the following year 
obtained the exclusive right from the Empress Cathe- 
rine to dis: for mammoth bones on them. 

Immense alluvial deposits, filled with wood and 
the fossil bones of animals, are found throughout the 
shores of Arctic Siberia ; but in the cliffs or " wood 
hills" of the New Siberia Islands these deposits are 
still more plentiful. For years after their first dis- 
covery the seekers for fossil ivory annually resorted 
to these islands; and, in 1821, the fossil ivory thus 
procured v/eighed twenty thousand lbs. Hedenstrom, 
a Russian officer, residing at Yakutsk, was employed 
l)y the Government to survey the New^ Sibeiia 
Islands in 1809, and occupied three years in their 
exploration. He reported, in 1810, that, to the north- 
ward of these islands dui'ing three yeai's, he was 
always stopped at a short distance from the land by 
^veak ice. 

In March, 1821, Lieut. Anjou, afterwards Admiral, 
went across the ice with dog sledges, to the Kotelnoi 
Island. He then traveled over the ice to the north- 
^vard in April, and saw vapor rising to the north-west 
Avhen at a distance of forty- two miles from Kotelnoi 
(lat. 70^ ^S '), which led him to suppose that there 
Avas open water in that direction. But Wrangell tells 
us that when the ice cracks, even in places where it 
is thick and solid, vaporization immediately ensues, 
which is more or less dense according to the tempera- 
ture of the atmosphere. 

In March, 1823, Anjou again crossed to the New 



ANJOU'S TEAVELS. 669 

Siberia Islands. Open sea, with drifting masses of 
ice, was seen on the 26th, the ice drifting from east 
to west. The frequenters of the islands believe this 
current to be the ebb tide. On the 9th of April he 
started over the ice to the eastward, and met with 
thin ice on the 14th, at a distance of sixty miles ; but 
lines of impassable hummocks obliged him to make 
for the mainland. 

Anjou arrived at the conviction that all efforts to 
advance by the ice to any considerable distance from 
land would prove unavailing, owing to the thinness 
of the ice and to the open water within twenty to 
thirty miles of the islands. His expedition, however, 
effected a complete survey of this interesting group. 
The sea between the islands and Siberia is not com- 
pletely frozen over until the end of October, and the 
coasts are free by the end of July. Throughout the 
summer the sea is covered with fields of ice, drifting 
to and fro with winds and currents. 

While Anjou was conducting these explorations, 
Wrangell was prosecuting similar researches from his 
head-quarters at JSTijni Kolymsk, near the mouth of 
the Kolyma, to reach which place he had traveled 
overland from St. Petersburg, a distance of nearly 
'h.ve thousand miles. On the way he passed through 
Yakutsk, a flourishing city of four thousand inhabi- 
tants, situated on the Lena River, and a commercial 
center of the fur and ivory trade. Its dwellings con- 
sist chiefly of Yourts, with turf-covered roofs, doors of 
skins, and windows of ice. During the month of 
January the thermometer stands on an average of 
45^ below zero. According to Sir Edward Brewster, 
Yakutsk is near the " Asiatic pole of cold," one of 

the two coldest points on the globe. 
3,8 



670 wrangell's exploratioi^s. 

Wrangell made four journeys on tlie Polar Sea, ac- 
complislied in dog sledges called narti. The runners 
are of birch wood, and the upper surface of the 
sledge of willow shoots woven together. All the 
parts are fastened together with hide thongs. When 
in use the sledges are turned over, and water is poured 
on the runners to produce a thin crust of ice, which 
glides easily over the snow, and the icy runner is 
called wodiat. As spring advances it of course be- 
comes useless, and whalebone is sometimes substituted. 

Wrangell considered March to be the best time of 
the year for sledging, when it is easier Avork for the 
dogs. A well-loaded sledge required a team of twelve 
dogs, which were fed on frozen herrings. The men 
wore reindeer-skin shirts, great leathern boots lined 
with fur, a fur cap, and reindeer-skin gloves. The 
party had a conical tent of reindeer-skin, w^ith a light 
framework of six poles ; and, when they encamped, 
they lighted a fire in the centre of it, and were half 
smothered. Each man slept on a bear-skin, and a 
reindeer- skin coverlet was provided for every two. 

In his first journey, during March, 1820, Wrangell 
explored the coast from the mouth of the Kolyma to 
Cape Chelagskoi. His second journey was undertaken 
in order to see how^ far he could go over the ice to the 
nortlnvard away from the Siberian coast, and he 
started March 27th, 1821. At a distance of two miles 
from the shore, the party had to cross a chain of high 
and rugged hummocks five miles wide, beyond which 
there was an extensive plain of ice. Wrangell con- 
tinued to advance to the northward for a distance of 
one hundred and forty miles, when he found the ice 
to be very thin and weak, owing to large patches of 
brine that were lodged on the snow. There were 



SKILL OF SIBERIAN SLEDGE-DEIVEES. 671 

cracks in every direction, through wliich the sea-water 
came up, and the ice was scarcely a foot thick. It 
was therefore deemed prudent to commence a retreat 
on the 4th of April. 

In approaching the coast again, they had to cross 
ranges of hummocks of greenish-blue colored ice, 
often eighty and ninety feet in height, denoting tre- 
mendous pressure during the winter. Wrangell 
returned to Nijni Kolymsk April 28th, after an ab- 
sence of thirty-six days, during which time he had 
traveled over eight hundred miles. He was much 
struck during this journey at the wonderful skill dis- 
played by the sledge-drivers in finding their way by 
watching the wave-like stripes of snow, formed by 
the wind, which are called in Siberia Sastrugi. The 
ridges always indicate the quarter from which the 
prevailing winds blow. The inhabitants of the Um- 
dras often travel over several hundred miles with no 
other guide than these sastrugi. They know by 
experience at what angle they must cross the greater 
and lesser waves of snow, in order to arrive at their 
destination, and they never fail. It often happens 
that the true, permanent sastrugi have been obliter- 
ated by others produced by temporary winds ; but the 
traveler is not deceived thereby ; his practised eye 
detects the change, he carefully removes the recently 
drifted snow, and corrects his course by the lower 
sastrugi^ and by the angle formed by the two. 

On his third journey Wrangell started northward 
from the coast March 16th, 1822, chiefly with the 
object of ascertaining the truth of a native report that 
there was high land in that direction. After travel- 
ing for many days over very difficult hummocks, the 
party came to such weak ice, broken up by so many 



672 weai^gell's last jouki^ey. 

cracks, that Wrangell su^Dposed the open sea must be 
at hand, and deemed it prudent to return, when one 
hundred and seventy miles from the land. On this 
journey he traveled over nine hundred miles. 

Wrangell's fourth and last journey was commenced 
March 14th, 1823, and Cape Chelagskoi was reached 
on the 18th. A Tuski chief here informed him that, 
from an adjacent part of the coast, on a clear sum- 
mer's day, snow-covered mountains might be descried 
at a great distance to the north, and that herds of 
reindeer sometimes came across the ice of the sea, 
probably from thence. The natives concur in stating 
that Cape Jakan is the nearest point to this northern 
land. The party struck off across the ice to the 
northward when they had gone a little beyond Cape 
Chelagskoi ; but a violent gale of wind cracked and* 
broke up the ice, which was only three feet thick, 
placing them in considerable danger. As they ad- 
vanced it became thinner, and they only succeeded in 
crossing the cracks, just frozen over, in safety, owing 
to the incredibly swift running of the dogs. Wran. 
gell Avas obliged to turn back at a distance of seventy 
miles from the land, and in reaching it they had to 
ferry themselves across many cracks, on pieces of ice, 
the dogs swimming and towing. To the west the sea 
appeared completely open, Avith floating ice, and dark 
vapors ascending from it obscured the horizon. Lanes 
of water were opening in all directions, and, without 
a boat, the little party was placed in a position of 
extreme danger. A gale of wind dashed the pieces 
of ice against each other with a loud, crashing noise, 
and split many of the floes into fragments. The dogs 
saved them. They clashed wildly and swiftly towards 
the land, and reached it on the 27th. 



WRANGELL LAND. 673 

Wrangell continued the coast survey for some time 
longer, and returned to Nijni Kolymsk May lOth, 
after an absence of seventy-eight days, having traveled 
over fifteen hundred and thirty miles. Thus ended 
the series of attempts to reach the unknown north- 
ern land, which, though not seen by him, Wrangell 
still thinks may possibly exist. It was sighted by 
Captain Kellett, and afterwards, in 1867, by Captain 
Long, an American whaler, who approached from 
Bering's Strait; and it is now marked on the maps as 
Wrangell Land. On Wrangell's map it is stated 
that the mountains are visible, from Cape Jakan, in 
clear summer weather. 

In 1843, Middendorf was sent to explore the 
regions which terminate in Cape Taimyr, by land. 
He descended the river Khatanga, and reached the 
Taimyr lake in June. In August he arrived at the 
shores of the Polar Sea, and sighted Cape Taimyr, 
whence he saw open vv^ater, and no ice-blink in any 
direction. He found the rise and fall of the tide to 
be as much as thirty-six feet. His visit was, how- 
ever, in the very height of the short Arctic summer. 

The observations of Hedenstrom, Anjou, and Wran- 
gell, have led Russian geographers to the conclusion 
that there is a part of the Polar ocean always an open 
sea, extending from some twenty miles north of the 
New Siberia Islands to about the same distance off 
the coast of the continent between Cape Chelagskoi 
and Cape North. This opinion rests on the instances 
in which these explorers, in March and April, 
encountered either open water covered with loose 
floes or very thin ice, indicative of its immediate 
vicinity, at different points of this line. Wrangell 
considered that the fact of the northerly winds being 



674 THE "great HUSSTATS" POLYmA." 

sufficiently damp to wet the clothes of his party, was a 
further corroboration of the existence of an open sea in 
that direction. In summer, the current along the Sibe- 
rian coast is from east to west, and in autumn from west 
to east. On the breaking up of the ice in the great 
Siberian rivers their waters help to drive the floes 
from the coast, and the westerly current then carries 
them in heavily-packed masses towards the Atlantic, 
and millions of tons of ice are thus sent to swell the 
size of the polar -pack, and are annually melted 
between Greenland and Nova Zembla. 

Wrangell, using an allowable poetical license, has 
called the open water off the Siberian coast "the 
wide immeasurable ocean f and ever since the " great 
Polynia of the Russians" has been a phrase on which 
geographical theorists have founded the wildest spec- 
ulations. Now, in all ];)arts of the Arctic regions 
the ice is more or less in motion during the summer, 
so that the observation of open water by Middendorf, 
near Cape Taimyr in August, is nothing remarkable. 

There can be no reason to doubt that, owing to 
strong currents and gales of winds, the ice is in 
motion off the coast of Siberia very early in the 
spring, giving rise to polynias, or lanes and pools 
of water ; but there is nothing in the observations of 
the Russian explorers to warrant the belief in a 
"wide immeasurable ocean." The rising vapor, so 
often mentioned by Anjou, is caused by tidal cracks 
in the ice, and is no proof of an open sea; and the 
phenomena of damp winds and rotten ice betoken 
just wdiat Anjou saw — a limited expanse of sea, 
covered with drifting floes. There is no evidence 
whatever that the Siberian Polynia of the early spiring 
is of greater extent than the prevalence of gales of 
wind and currents would easily explain. 



THE EXPLOEATIOI^ OF THE YENISEI. 



675 



The latest Russian exploring achievement in 
Siberia lias been the examination, in 1866, of the 
mouth of the Yenisei, by Herr Schmidt, made in con- 
sequence of the alleged discovery of a mammoth 
skeleton in the vicinity of the lower Yenisei River. 
An interesting fact in connection with this river, is 
the immense quantity of drift-wood lying on either 
side of its banks. About the low lands of the estuary 
the wood lies scattered about, and, mixed with loam 
and sand, forms the chief component of the numerous 
islands studded about the mouth. In many places 
peat-moss is to be found, and stems of trees, which 
prove that vegetation formerly spread further north 
than now. Ilere, as well as in most parts of Siberia, 
the larch {Larix Sihirica) marks the commencement of 
forest growth. 




CHAPTER XL. 
TRAVELS IN ALASKA. 

The territory of Alaska, purchased by the United 
States in 1867, is a wide and interesting field for dis- 
covery. Visited occasionally for two centuries by 
navigators and traders, little more was known of it 
in the civilized world than the outline of its coast ; 
but its annexation to our country has turned oiu* 
attention to it, and caused more accurate details of its 
characteristics and resources to be brought within 
our reach. 

This vast domain, for which the Russian Govern- 
ment received some seven million dollars, contains 
500,000 square miles, a large proportion of which is 
uninhabited and uninhabitable. The southern part 
is peopled by Esquimaux, Indians and Russians, 
and has natural productions of much value. Its for- 
ests and mineral wealth are much like those of the 
neighboring British territory. There are important 
cod-fisheries along various portions of the coast ; and 
salmon abound in all the rivers. The fur-trade has 
always been great, and if protected by proper laws 
may continue to be a source of wealth to its owners. 

The Aleutian Islands comprise a valuable portion 
of the Alaskan purchase, and besides some commercial 
importance have many points of interest, including 




TRAVKLING IN KAMCHATKA. 




ALEUTIAN^; CATClilNG Wll/.Lli;S. 



TRAVELS IN ALASKA. 677 

geysers, hot springs, and volcanoes. The natives have 
a curious way of capturing whales. They surround 
one with boats, and throw into him so many harpoons^ 
to which bladders filled with air are attached, that he 
is obliged to float on the surface, and is then easily 
killed with lances. 

Much of our information respecting the interior of 
Alaska, was gained by William H. Dall and Frederick 
Whymper, who traveled there in 1866, under the aus- 
pices of the Western Union Telegraph Company. 
The object of the exploration was to find a suitable 
route for a telegraph line from Bering's Strait to 
San Francisco, which was to be a part of an inter- 
continental line, in case the Atlantic cables should 
fail. 

The Yukon Hiver which the explorei's ascended 
six hundred miles, is one of the greatest streams in 
the world. The Amazon, the Mississippi, and per- 
haps the La Plata, alone surpass it. For a distance 
of seventeen hundred miles from its mouth, its aver- 
age width is more than a mile, and while it courses 
through the centre of Alaska, it rises far to the south 
in British America, near the sources of the Mac- 
kenzie. The larger portion of it is frozen over during 
eight months of the year, but in summer it is navi- 
gable far above Fort Yukon. Its course in Alaska 
is mainly toward the west, but at Nulato, the most 
northernly trading-post of the Russians, it turns and 
flows toward the south, and falls into the sea just 
south of Norton's Sound. 

Mr. Whymper was accompanied by five white men 
and three Indians. They were equipped with four 
sledges and twenty dogs. These dogs were not of 
the best kind, but had many characteristics of the 



678 UP THE YUKON. 

wolf. Their food was mostly fish, but they would 
eat anything that aiforded nutriment. 

The party started from Unalaehleet on Norton's 
Sound, soon after the late sunrise of Oct. 27th. The 
temperature was 2^ above zero; but the snow was 
still loose, and the rivers not yet thickly frozen, so 
that their progress at first was slow and tedious. 

At noon on Nov. 11th, after an overland journey 
of one hundred and seventy miles, they saw before 
them a broad and level expanse of snow, which 
marked their arrival at the Yukon River. Keachins: 
soon after the Indian village of Coltog, they rested 
there two days. The houses of this village were 
underground, with an entrance by a short shaft and 
tunnel. In the roof, which was arched above ground, 
was the only other opening — a hole for the escape of 
smoke from the fire. The dogs enjoyed the warmth 
of the dome, and sometimes fell through to the fire 
below. When the fire was burnt out, and the 
smoke-hole was covered with a skin, in order to re- 
tain the heat, there was no ventilation and the scents 
were manifold and abominable. 

The party set out again on the 14th. The river 
wound about so much that they crossed it several 
times to escape long curves. Their way was greatly 
obstructed by masses of ice rising in irregular heaps ; 
but even this track was preferable to that on land, 
for in the forests the dogs would constantly run the 
sledge against stumps, and wait for the men to free it, 
and in descending hills the sledge would overtake the 
dogs, tangle their harness, and run over them. 

After a day's journey of twenty-five miles, the trav- 
elers encamped in an empty Indian house. They 
arose early the next morning, and after going on some 



TRAVELS IK ALASKA. 679 

seven miles, met a train of sledges witli Russians and 
Indians, who, turning back, went with them to JSTulato. 
Here their quarters were clean and comparatively 
comfortable. The trading-post is on the north bank 
of the Yukon, on a flat stretch of land, at the mouth 
of a considerable tributary. There are large trees for 
building purposes, a rich soil, and in the short summer, 
luxuriant grass and innumerable berries. Water is 
brought on a sledge from a hole in the ice of the riv- 
er a quarter of a mile from the post ; and by wicker- 
baskets let down in the water through the ice, large 
quantities of fish are caught. 

The coldest day was December 5th when the 
thermometer stood at 58^ below zero. Yet the men 
did not feel the severity of cold, for the wind did not 
blow ; whereas a slight wind^ when the temperature 
was only a few degrees below zero, seemed to search 
out every little seam or tear in their clothing, and 
cause special suffering to ''nose, ears, and angles 
generally." The shortest day, December 21st, enjoyed 
only an hour and fifty minutes of sunlight. Christ- 
mas was celebrated with such a feast as the circum- 
stances allowed. Fine Auroral lights, the sports of 
hunting and fishing, trading, and amateur theatricals, 
diversified the winter sojourn at Nulato. 

Early in April indications of summer were seen. 
On the 9th files appeared ; on the 10th the willows 
were seen budding; on the 28th the first goose 
arrived from the south. The river began to thaw 
May 5th, and broke up on the 19tli; masses of ice 
rushed past for several days, and on the 24th the 
stream was mostly clear. The Eussians were now 
ready for a trip to an Indian trading-place two hun- 
dred and forty miles up the stream. They had a 



680 A WINTER AT NULATO. 

large skin boat, fitted with rudder and sails, and 
capable of carrying two tons of goods and provisions. 
The Americans accompanied them with a smaller 
boat and a cargo of about seven hundred pounds. 
These vessels would recover from a collision with 
snags or ice which would sink vessels made of bark. 

The summer came on apace. Ice lingered in the 
river till May 27th, but on June 5 th, the thermome- 
ter at noon stood at 80^ in the shade, and the heat 
compelled the men to lie by for a time. 

At the Indian village referred to, the Kussians 
stopped, and Mr. Whymper's party presently jour- 
neyed on. Moose hunting was common in portions of 
the river. The days were extremely long, and there 
was no light but the twilight. Fort Yukon was 
reached on June 23d, the party having traveled six 
hundred miles in twenty-nine days. The Fort is a 
trading-post of the Hudson's Bay Company, who buy 
the privilege of holding it within the bounds of Alaska. 
The most striking scene at this place is the fur-room, 
in which can be seen thousands of marten-skins hang- 
ing from the beams, and huge piles of common furs. 

On the 8th of July, the party began to descend the 
river. The current bore them on at the rate of a 
hundred miles a day. They landed only two or 
three times a day to prej)are their tea and fish, and 
making six liundred miles in about six days, 
arrived at Nulato. Here, receiving orders to return 
to St. Michael, they went on down the river. The 
region below Nulato is poorer in vegetation and is 
seldom visited by travelers. The northern or Aphoon 
mouth is the easiest navigated, and through it the 
travelers reached the sea, liaving come from Fort 
Yukon thirteen hundred miles in fifteen and a half 



TEAVELS IIS" ALASKA. 681 

days. Two days more of sailing brought tliem to 
St. Michael. 

The Co-Yukon Indians living near the Yukon 
above Nn.lato, are more savage than most tribes, and 
lightly value human life. Tombs at Nulato still 
mark the massacre of forty Indians and part of the 
guard in 1851. The dead are interred in oblong 
boxes raised on posts, and are mourned by the women 
for a year. The people superstitiously save bones of 
animals, thinking that if they were given to the dogs 
or burned, their fishing and hunting could not be 
successful. They catch reindeer by driving them into 
an enclosure, whose sides are made of stakes with 
loops between them, where they are shot. Intemper- 
ance is almost unknown among these Indians. They 
barter furs for porcelain beads, combs, looking-glasses 
and knives. In the spring they all wear wooden 
goggles when hunting or traveling, to shield their 
eyes from the blinding glare of the snow; narrow 
slits before the eyes give sufficient light for sight. 

The Co-Yukon dialect has no resemblance to the 
language spoken at the coast, but resembles that of 
some of the tribes of north-eastern Asia, where these 
Indians probably originated. The Yukon tribes are 
more nearly allied to the true North American Indian. 

Sitka, or New Archangel, the capital of Alaska, is 
situated on an island discovered in 1741 by Tschiri- 
koff, the companion of Bering. Formerly it was 
exclusively the head-quarters of the Russian American 
Fur Company, and the residence of the governor, who 
was the autocrat of all the Russians in America. It 
is now a town of considerable importance. 



CHAPTER XLI 
DR. HAYES' EXPEDITION. 

The name of Dr. Isaac I. Hayes is already familiar 
to the reader and to his countrymen. A native of 
Pennsylvania, immediately after his graduation at the 
University of Pennsylvania, at the early age of twenty- 
one, he joined the Second Expedition of Dr. Kane as 
surgeon and naturalist. Of the important services 
wrhich he rendered this expedition, Dr. Kane has left 
ample testimony. The two men warmly sympathized, 
and by sharing each others trials and labors light- 
ened their mutual burdens. When by mutual con- 
sent, a portion of the crew of the Advance left that 
vessel to attempt to reach the Danish settlements of 
Lower Greenland, Dr. Hayes led the withdrawing 
party, which was obliged to return to the brig after 
penetrating some distance southward. 

Undaunted by the perils and hardships of his 
first voyage, or by the untimely death of his late 
commander, Dr. Hayes was full of zeal for another 
expedition. His faith was strong that he could live 
in the Polar regions as well as the Esquimaux, and 
could even penetrate to the North Pole. It was diffi- 
cult to inspire others with the same zeal and faith. 
His friends and the public generally, received his 
propositions coolly. The game did not seem worthy 

682 

/ 



HAYES EXPEDITION. 683 

of tlie cliase. The many lives already lost, the many 
sufferings endured, and the vast property sacrificed in 
the Arctic Seas without commensurate results, were 
certainly not encouraging for future operations. 

Not so thought the doctor. After having experi- 
enced the rigors of the Frigid Zone for two long 
winters, he was satisfied that white men could live 
there permanently, relying solely on the supplies which 
the country furnished for support. His faith and 
perseverance were finally crowned with such a degree 
of success that his friends, after ^ve years of importu- 
nity, fitted him out with a small schooner, which he 
may be said to have argued into being ; for he went 
around the country lecturing on his favorite project 
and would not be denied. 

The schooner, Spring Hill, was at length purchased, 
her name changed to " United States " and Dr. Hayes 
placed in command. The plan of the expedition was 
his own, and may be best stated in his own words : 
" My object was to complete the survey of the north 
coasts of Greenland, and to make such explorations as 
I might find practicable in the direction of the North 
Pole." 

Full of hope and in the highest spirits, Dr. Hayes 
and his little party set sail from Boston, July 7th, 
1860, steering directly for the outer capes of New- 
foundland, and so prosperous was the voyage that 
the " United States " reached the bold promontory of 
Swarte Huk within the Arctic Circle, A us;. 2d. Here 
she was becalmed ; and Dr. Hayes' graphic pen gives 
this beautiful description of the scene here witnessed : — 

" The air was warm, almost as a summer's night at 
home, and yet there were the icebergs and the bleak 
mountains with which the fancy, in this land of green 



684 HA yes' expedition. 

hills and waving forests, can associate nothing but 
cold repulsiveness. The sky was bright and soft, and 
strangely inspiring as the skies of Italy. The bergs 
had wholly lost their chilly aspect, and glittering in 
the blaze of the brilliant heavens, seemed in the dis- 
tance like masses of burnished metal or solid ilame. 
Nearer at hand, they were huge blocks of Parian 
marble, inlaid with mammoth gems of pearl and opal. 
One in particular exhibited the perfection of the 
grand. Its form was not unlike that of the Coli- 
seum, and it lay so far away that half its height was 
buried beneath the line of blood-red waters. The sun, 
slowly rolling along the horizon, passed behind it, 
and it seemed as if the old Roman ruin had suddenly 
taken fire." 

After several narrow, escapes from nips and icebergs, 
the " United States," was compelled to take up her 
winter-quarters at Port Foulke on the Greenland 
coast, about twenty miles south of Rensselaer Harbor. 
The neighborhood abounded with game, and to this 
fact and to the great good cheer which reigned on 
the schooner, the crew were indebted for the uniform 
good health which they enjoyed during the winter. 
The dogs were not so fortunate. These pined away 
and died during the long night as they did on Kane's 
expedition. Dogs have not the consolations of hope, 
and cannot endure the artificial life of ship-board as 
well as men. 

Fortunately the Esquimaux were able to furnish some 
fresh dog teams, and early in April, 1861, Dr. Hayes 
started out into the icy wilderness. The Greenland 
shore proving perfectly impassable, he resolved to 
cross over the sound to Grinnell Land and try to 
ascend that coast. Of the difficulties encountered no 



H ayes' EXPEDITION". 685 

one unacquainted witL. Arctic travel can form any 
adequate idea. They were enougli to appall and dis- 
courage at the start even the strongest and most reso- 
lute of travelers. 

After toiling on for twenty-iive days, Hayes found 
that he was not half way over the sound and that 
his men were breaking down from fatigue. Selecting 
therefore three of the most robust and courageous, 
Jensen, McDonald and Knorr, he sent the remainder 
back to the schooner, and with these and fourteen 
dogs, he boldly pressed on to Grinnell Land, which 
he reached in fourteen days. 

The journey along the coast was little less fatigu- 
ing, and he had advanced only five days when Jensen, 
the strongest man in the party, gave out utterly 
exhausted. Leaving him in charge of McDonald, Dr. 
Hayes pushed on with Knorr for his only companion, 
and, May 18th, reached a deep bay where rotten ice 
and wide seams put a veto to further progress. He 
had the satisfaction of seeing on the opposite side of 
the bay Mount^ Parry, and farther on Cape Union 
— then the most northern known land. The return 
to Port Foulke was safely accomplished. 

The schooner having been released from the ice, Dr. 
Hayes made an effort, July 12 th, to sail across to Grin- 
nell Land ; but finding his little vessel too crijDpled to 
force her way through the pack ice, he was compelled 
to head her for home, where he arrived in October. 

Dr. Hayes subsequently published a very interest- 
ing history of his expedition in a book called " The 
Open Polar Sea." He has still faith that there is 
such a sea, and that it can be navigated. No man 
living is better qualified to lead the way thither. 
39 



CHAPTER XLIL 
CAPTAIN HALL'S FIRST TWO EXPEDITIONS. 

Charles Frais'cis Hall whose life of adventures 
and self-denial lias closed under circumstances wMcli 
command for liim tlie admiration and S3mipatliy of 
his countrymen, was a native of New England, born in 
1821. He received but a limited education, learned 
the trade of a blacksmith, and followed that business 
for several years. Subsequently he migrated to Cin- 
cinnati, Ohio, where he appears to have engaged in 
various pursuits. He had a taste for scientific study 
and inventions, and was at one time greatly interested 
in caloric engines. Engaging in the manufacture of 
engraved seals he acquired skill as an engraver and 
draughtsman. Connected with this business he dealt 
in stationery, and published an advertising sheet 
called '^ llie OccasionaV From his experience in 
this incipient journalism he was emboldened to start 
" Tlie Penny Press^^'' which under his successors ac- 
quired a large circulation. 

The fate of Sir John Franklin was about this time 
exciting the interest of the world, and the subject of 
Arctic discovery next absorbed Hall's attention. He 
carefully watclied all the various expeditions sent out 
for Franklin's relief, and finally felt a desire to join 
in the search. With this object in view he began to 

686 



hall's first expedition. 687 

fit Mmself for a life in the Frozen Zone, by sleeping 
under a tent at Mount Adams during tlie winter 
months. 

The tidings brought by McClintock led Hall to 
believe that some of Franklin's men were still alive 
and could be found ; and it seemed to him as if he 
was " called " to try and do the work. So he deci- 
ded to do it. After laying his plans before his Cin- 
cinnati friends, he went to New York, interested 
Mr. Grrinnell in his scheme, and at a meeting of the 
Geographical Society, introduced himself as a man 
who " wanted to go and find the bones of Sir John 
Franklin." 

Mr. Hall was not in any sense of the word a schol- 
ar, nor was he a navigator ; he was a plain unobtru- 
sive man, and measured by the current conventional- 
isms, would have made a poor figure in a company of 
gentlemen. But he was endowed with a physical 
constitution of exceptional vigor and endurance ; able 
to meet all conditions of life, whether among people 
civilized or savage ; and possessed of a vast deal of 
patience, good nature, and kindness of heart. 

His first expedition north was a singularly modest 
one, and its plan was unique. He did not propose to 
break through the ice of unknown frozen seas ; but to 
be set down alone on the shores contiguous to the 
waters where whales are found, and thence, with 
Esquimaux guides, to find his way to King William's 
Land, where he believed, among a people so primitive, 
the traditions of Franklin's fate would certainly sur- 
vive. 

Various articles of outfit and about one thousand 
dollars were donated by friends of the undertaking ; 
Williams and Havens of New London offered to 



688 hall's first expedition. 

transport the traveler and his outfit free of charge in 
one of their whaling-ships ; and on the 29th of May, 
I860, Hall sailed in the " George Henry," commanded 
by Capt. S. O. Buddington and bound for the Arctic 
whaling-groundvS. A small schooner, the " Ameret," 
formerly the "Eescue" of Kane's first expedition, 
sailed with the George Henry as a tender. An Esqui- 
maux named Kudlago, who had come to the United 
States with Buddington, and on whom Hall greatly 
relied for assistance^ died on his passage home ; his 
last words were " Do you see ice ? '^ 

After touching at Hoist einberg, Greenland, Bud- 
dington crossed Davis' Strait, and on the 17th of 
August, anchored his vessel in a small bay just north 
of the entrance to Frobisher's Bay. Here and in this 
neighborhood the whalers commenced operations, and 
Hall began his acquaintance with the natives who 
were scattered along the coast. On the 18th of Sep- 
tember, Capt. Tyson arrived in the Georgiana, and 
Hall relates instances of the kind and unselfish dis- 
position which he manifested, while competing with 
Buddinorton's men in catchino; whales. Soon after- 
ward a fearful gale came on, during which the Eescue 
was wrecked ; the Georgiana was driven ashore and 
narrowly escaped ; and a large whale-boat belonging 
to Hall, in which he expected to make long trips, was 
destroyed. The George Henry escaped, but was wreck- 
ed on her next voyage about two years later. 

In November, Hall made the acquaintance of 
Ebierbing, a noted hunter and pilot, and Tookoolito 
his wife. They were of the Esquimaux or " Innuit " 
ai'istoci'acy, had visited England, could speak the 
English language, and the lady's voice was " low and 
sweet." They became attached to Hall, were his 



hall's fiest expedition. 689 

constant guides and companions, went with him to 
the United States on his return, accompanied him in 
his subsequent journeys, and are now better known 
as" Joe ^' and "Hannah." 

The George Henry remained safely in her quarters 
through the winter, and was not released from her icy 
fetters till the l7th of July, 1861; but even then, 
intervening ice prevented Buddington from reaching 
open water where he wished to cruise for whales. 

Meantime Hall had been much ashore, making 
short journeys along the coast and living in the huts 
of the natives to acquire their language and habits of 
life. He now planned a longer trip, and on the 9th of 
August, left the George Henry in a whale-boat rowed 
by six natives to explore Frobisher's Strait. He re- 
turned to the ship on the 27th of September, and in 
reply to his first question, — "How many whales se- 
cured? " was informed, " Not one." Such is the " fish- 
erman's luck " which sometimes attends our whalers. 

In this excursion Hall ascertained that Frobisher's 
Strait is in fact a bay; and it is touching to see the 
value which, in the absence of more important geo- 
graphical discoveries he placed on this achievement. 
He was also greatly elated at finding what he sup- 
posed to be relics of Frobisher's Expedition — coal, 
iron, etc. ; these simple memorials not only brought 
back the presence of those stalwart and adventurous 
Englishmen who visited the " Meta Incognitia " three 
hundred years before, but gave to him a sense of com- 
panionship in his lonely ramblings over its desolate 
wilds. He also found a tradition of this early expe- 
dition alive among the natives. There had been 
handed down to them the memory of white men who 
had come in ships and lived for a while among them ; 



690 hall's first expeditioi^. 

and this fact confirmed Hall in his impression of the 
value of tradition, through which, in the absence of 
literature, important historical events like the wreck 
of Franklin's ships, were not lost among them. 

The researches of Hall during this expedition were 
confined to a small extent of territory laying several 
degrees below the Arctic Circle ; but it would be 
unjust to estimate his services by the limit of latitude 
which he reached. His experiences enabled him to 
become a competent authority in matters jDertaining 
to the inhabitants of the region, and he has thrown 
much light upon their customs and mode of living. 
In eating they are gluttons of the highest order. 
Hall seems to have kept himself from their excesses, 
but to have fully endorsed their tastes, and he is often 
emphatic in eulogizing their abominable dishes. 

Although the Innuits are kind and hospitable to 
each other when all are living and well, they are sin- 
gularly stony-hearted towards the sick and dying. 
Especially to their women this coolness is most mourn- 
ful. When one of the poor creatures seems nigh to 
death, they leave her alone in one of the snow-houses, 
putting near her a few of the articles which are most 
necessary for life, and then remain in other houses, 
abstaining from labor, till the poor sufierer passes 
away. Hall tried to set the example of Christian 
kindness to them in caring for the sick ; but almost in 
vain. The Esquimaux are a singularly conservative 
people, and whatever their ancestors did, they think 
they must do. To any remonstrance against their 
liabits they used always to answer, " The old Innuits 
did so ; " and that settled the matter. 

Captain Buddington intended to start for home in 
the fall of 18G1, and all were greatly disappointed 



hall's secois-d expedition-. 691 

wlien it was found, very unexpectedly, tliat heavy 
pack ice was already drifting down across the entrance 
of the bay. " Our fate is sealed," said Buddington ; 
'^ another winter here ; we are already imprisoned.^' 

Another long winter was passed by the George 
Henry and her crew at Field Bay. As provisions 
were short on the ship, portions of the men were 
quartered upon the natives, but generally found the 
privations of Innuit life harder to bear than a short 
allowance of food on the vessel. One man froze his 
feet so badly that Buddington was obliged to ampu- 
tate his toes, which he did skillfully. Others of the 
crew arrived at the ship nearly dead with hunger. 
One who got lost was searched for by Hall and Bud- 
dington and found dead on the ice. 

On the 8th of the succeeding August, the George 
Henry again floated free, and the next day started for 
home. Hall was accompanied by his Esquimaux 
friends, and their infant boy Tukeliketa who died 
soon after his arrival in the United States. 

After a stay of nearly two years in his native coun- 
try, Captain Hall again started north, July 30th, 1864, 
to renew his acquaintance with the Innuits. With 
Joe and Hannah he took passage in the Monticello, 
Captain Buddington, and the party was landed on 
the northern coasts of Hudson's Bay. Of his five 
years' residence in this region, little is known; 
although he was most of the time in communication 
with whaling-ships, and received from them such 
supplies as he needed. He penetrated north as far 
as Hecla and Fury Strait, visited King William's 
Land, and returned to the United States in 1869. 

In a letter to Henry Grinnell written at Kepulse 
Bay, June 20th, 1869, Captain Hall gives the follow- 



692 hall's second expedition. 

ing account of his journeys and the results of his 
search for Franklin : — 

" This day 1 have returned from a sledge journey of ninety 
days to and from King William's Land. It was m}^ purpose, 
and every preparation was made, to make this jonrney last 
season, but my attention then having been called to Melville 
Peninsula, in the vicinity of Fury and Hecla Straits, where 
native report had it that white men had been seen, I directed 
my expedition there, by way of Am-i-toke, Oog-lik Isle, Ig- 
loo-lik, with the ardent hope and expectation of rescuing 
alive some of Sir John Franklin's lost companions. The 
result of the journey was the finding of the tenting-place of 
a few white men, and a stone pillar they had erected close by 
it at the bottom of Parry Bay, which is some fifty miles south 
of the western outlet of Fury and Ilecla Straits, and the vis- 
iting of several places w^here white men and their traces had 
been seen by natives of Ig-loo-lik and vicinity in or about 
the years 1806-67. 

" The result of my sledge journey to King William's Land 
may be summed up thus : None of Sir John Franklin's com- 
panions ever reached or died on Montreal Island. It was 
late in July, 1848, that Crozier and his party, of about forty 
or forty-five, passed down the west coast of King William's 
Land, in the vicinity of Cape Ilerschel. The party was drag- 
ging two sledges on the sea ice, whicli was nearly in its last 
stage of dissolution, one a large sledge laden with an awning- 
covered boat, and the other a small one laden with provisions 
and camp material. Just before Crozier and party arrived 
at Cape Ilerschel they Were met by four families of natives^ 
and both parties went into camp near each other. Two 
Escpiimaux men, who were of the native party, gave me 
much sad but deeply interesting information. Some of it 
stirred my heart Avith sadness, intermingled with rage, for it 
was a confession that they, with their companions, did 
secretly and hastily abandon Crozier and his \y<xrty to suffer 
and die for need of fresh provisions, when in truth it was in 
their power to save every man alive. 

" The next trace of Crozier and his party is to be found in 



hall's second expedition. 693 

the skeleton whicli McClintock discovered a little below, to 
the southward and eastward of Cape Herschel. This was 
never found by the natives. The next trace is a camping- 
place on the sea-shore of King William's Land, about three 
miles eastward of Pfeiffer River, where two men died and 
received Christian burial. At this place fish-bones were 
found by the natives, which showed that Crozier and his 
party had caught, while there, a species of fish excellent for 
food, with which the sea there abounds. The next trace of 
this party occurs some five or six miles eastward, on a long, 
low point of King "William's Land, where one man died and 
was buried. Then about south-south-east, two and a half 
miles farther, the next trace occurs on Todd's Inlet, west of 
Point Pichardson, on some low land that is an island or a 
part of the main land, as the tide may be. Here the awning- 
covered boat and the remains of about thirty or thirty -five of 
Crozier's party were found. 

" In the spring of 1849, a large tent was found by some of 
the natives whom I saw, the floor of which was completely 
covered with the remains of white men. Close by were two 
graves. This tent was a little way inland from the head of 
Terror Bay. 

*' In the spring of 1861, when the snow was nearly all gone, 
an Esquimaux party, conducted by a native well known 
throughout northern regions, found two boats, with many 
skeletons in and about them. One of these boats had been 
previously discovered by McClintock ; the other was lying 
from one-quarter to one-half mile distant, and must have been 
completely entombed in the snow at the time McClintock's 
parties were there, or they most assuredly would have seen 
it. In and about this boat, besides the many skeletons allud- 
ed to, were found many relics. 

"The same year that the Erebus and Terror were abandoned, 
one of them consummated the great North-west passage, having 
five men aboard. The evidence of the exact number is cir- 
cumstantial. Everything about this JSTorth-west passage ship 
of Sir John Franklin's expedition, was in complete order ; 
four boats were hanging high up at the ship's sides and one 
was on the quarter-deck ; the vessel was in its winter housing 



694 hall's second expedition. 

of sail or tent cloth. This vessel was foinid by the Ook-joo- 
lik natives, near O'Reilly Island, lat. 68 deg. 30 min. north, 
long. 99 deg. 8 min. west, early in the spring of 1849, it being 
frozen in the midst of a smooth and unbroken floe of ice of 
only one winter's formation. 

" To complete the history of Sir John Franklin's last expe- 
dition, one must spend a summer on King AVilliam's Land, 
with a considerable party, whose only business should be to 
make searches for records which beyond doubt lie buried on 
that island. I am certain, from what I have heard the 
natives say, and from what I saw myself, that little or nothing 
more can be gained by making searches there when the 
island is clothed in its winter garb, for the Esquimaux have 
made search after search, over all the coast of King "William's 
Land, on either side, from its southern extreme up to Cape 
Felix, the northern point, for anything and everything that 
belonged to the companions of Sir John Franklin, and these 
searches have been made wdien the snow had nearly all disap- 
peared from the land. 

" My sledge company from Repulse Bay to King William's 
Land consisted of eleven souls, all Esquimaux. Although 
they are as untamable as eagles by nature, yet by their aid 
alone I was enabled to reach points otherwise inaccessible, 
and when there to gain much important information relative 
to the fate of Sir John Franklin's expedition. I tried hard 
to accomplish far more than I did, but not one of the com- 
pany would, on any account whatever, consent to remain 
with me in that country and make a summer search over that 
island, which, from information I had gained of the natives, 
I had reason to suppose would be rewarded by the discovery 
of the whole of the manuscript records that had accumulated 
in that great expedition, and been deposited in a vault a lit- 
tle way inland or eastward of Cape Victory. Knowing, as I 
now do, the character of the Esquimaux in that part of the 
country in whicli King William's Land is situated, I cannot 
wonder at nor blame the Repulse Bay natives for their refu- 
sal to remain tliere, as I desired. It is quite probable that 
had we remained, as I wished, no one of us would ever have 
got out of the country alive. IIow could we expect, if we 



hall's second EXPEDITI01N-. 695 

had got into straightened circumstances, that we should have 
received better treatment Irom the Esquimaux of that country 
than the one hundred and live souls who were under the com- 
mand of the heroic Crozier, some time after the landing on 
Kino; William's Land ? 

" Could I and my party, with, reasonable safety, have 
remained to make a summer search on King "William's Land, 
it is not only probable that we should have recovered the 
logs and journals of Sir John Franklin's expedition, but have 
gathered up and entombed the remains of nearly one hundred 
of his companions, for they lie about the places where the 
three boats have been found, and at the large camping-place 
at the head of Terror Bay and the three other places that I 
have already mentioned. In the cove, west side of Point 
Richardson, however, Nature herself has opened her bosom 
and given sepulture to the remains of the immortal heroes 
that have died there. 

'' Wherever I found that Sir John Franklin's companions 
had died I erected monuments, then fired salutes and waved 
the Star-Spangled Banner over them, in memory and resj)ect 
of the great and true discoverers of the l^orth-west passage. 

^' I could have gathered great quantities — a very great 
variety — of relics of Sir John Franklin's expedition, for they 
are now possessed by natives all over the Arctic regions that 
I visited or heard of, from Pond's Bay to Mackenzie Piver. 
As it was, I had to be satisfied with taking upon our sledges 
about one hundred and twenty-five pounds total weight of 
relics from natives about King William's Land." 




CHAPTER XLIII. 
THE POLAEIS EXPEDITION. 

On Capt. Hall's return from his second residence 
among the Esquimaux, lie wisely concluded tliat a 
seven years' search for relics of Sir John Franklin, 
whose fate had previously been pretty definitely ascer- 
tained, had exhausted that field of Arctic adventure, 
and he turned his attention to tlie project of a scientific 
expedition toward the North Pole under Government 
auspices. His persistent efiiorts to arouse a national 
interest in the enterprise w^ere at length successful, and 
Congress appropriated $50,000 for defraying the ex- 
penses of an expedition to be sent out in a government 
vessel under his command. 

Captain Hall's plans of operation, as stated by him 
in a lecture given in December, 1870, and reported in 
the Neio Yorlc Wo?'ld, were in part as follows : — 

" Crossing Bafiin's Ba}^, he will go to Smith's Is- 
land, and from thence westward through Jones Sound, 
following it for about two hundred miles ; then, after 
getting tliat distance, he ^vill turn to the north, and 
go as far as practical )le before winter sets in, and 
hopes to get as far as 80^, There he \v\]\ vnutev^ and 
in the spring of 1872, with all liis preparations com- 
plete, he will start on a grand sledge journey to the 
pole. 



CAPTAIN hall's PLANS. 697 

" He believes that in sledge traveling lie is an adept. 
The natives are very expert in those matters ; but he 
thinks he has improved somewhat on them. He has 
ofone throu2:h a full course in the Arctic college, and 
thinks he has little to learn in the matter of sledge 
traveling. This journey, he expects, will occupy from 
ninety to one hundred days, relying entirely for sup- 
port on the provisions obtained on the way. He will 
take with him on this journey about half of his crew, 
leaving the rest to subsist on whales, seals, and wal- 
ruses, or anything else they can obtain. 

" Every man in his party will be a picked man. 
His sailing master has had twenty years' experience 
in the Arctic Seas, and has full faith in him and the 
enterprise. His first and second officers have each 
had ten years' Arctic experience. 

"All of his crew will be trained to live as the 
Esquimaux do, and then they can stand the cold ; but 
they must eat raw meat, and stick to train-oil. He 
(Captain Hall) has eaten in one day fifteen pounds 
of raw meat, washed down with two and a half pints 
of train-oil While men thus live they can defy King 
Cold. A whale in those regions is a Godsend ; one 
whale is equal to 600 oxen, and affords the best eat- 
ing that he has ever enjoyed. In fact^ he has always 
enjoyed his food better in the Arctic regions than 
anywhere else ; and even here among civilized people 
the old longing for raw meat comes on him so strong 
sometimes, that he goes away to his closet where no 
one can see him and has a good feed of raw meat. 
And there is a virtue m it which it loses when 
cooked.'' 

The steamer Periwinkle having been designated 
for the service, was rechristened the Polaris — the 



698 THE POLARIS AND HER CREVr. 

Latin word for Nortli Star, — and under tlie supervision 
oi Capt. Hall was fitted up at Washington in tlie most 
tliorougli manner. Tlie vessel was rigged as a top- 
sail scliooner and her measurement was 400 tons. 

The Polaris steamed out of New York harbor on 
the afternoon of June 29th l&t^-O, havins: on board the 
following persons ; — 

Charles Francis Hall, Commander. Dr. Emil Bessels, Zoologist. 

R. W, D. Bryan, Astronomer and Chaplain. F. Meyer, Meteorologist. 

Sidney 0, Buddington, Sailing-master. George E. Tyson, Ass' t Navigator. 

; Hubbard C. Chester, First Mate. William Morton, Second Mate. 

Emil Schumann, Chief Engineer, A. A. Odell, Assistant Engineer. 

W. F. Campbell, John W. Booth, Firemen. 

John Heron, Stew^ird ; William Jackson, Cook ; Nathan J. Coffin, Carpenter. 

Hermann Siemons, Frederick Auting, J. W. C. Kruger, Henry Hobby, Joseph B. 
Manch, Gustavus Linguist, Peter Johnson, William Nindeman, Fi-edcrick Jamka, 
Noah Hayes, Seamen. 

Joe, Esquimaux Interpreter and Hunter; Hannah, Interpreter and Seamstress ; 
Punna, adopted daughter of Joe and Hannah. 

Dr. Bessels was a German savant, who had acquired 
Arctic experience in a voyage to Spitzbergen. Meyer, 
a native of Prussia, had been detailed from the U. S. 
Signal-service Bureau to accompany the expedition. 
Morton was well known as the discoverer of the 
'' Open Polar sea ; " he accompanied Kane on his two 
Arctic voyages, and was with him in Havana at the 
time of his death. 

Captain Buddington, was a sailor of great experi- 
ence having followed the sea from boyhood. At the 
age of thirteen he acted as cook on a fishing smack in 
the Gulf of Mexico ; afterwards he caught mackerel, 
and cod-fish in more eastern waters, and while yet a 
boy went on a whaling ship to the Southern Pacific. 
When the ship was ready to go home, he joined an 
empty whaler which had just come to the fishing, 
grounds, and returned as her mate, having been absent 
from home for a period of six years. 



SKETCH OF OFFICERS. 699 

Wlien Buddington sailed again it was as master of 
a wlialing vessel, and lie had followed tliat business 
ever since, making eleven voyages to tlie Arctic seas, 
extending over a period of twenty-tliree years. He 
commanded the '^ John Henry," tlie ship which gave 
Hall a free passage outward and homeward on his 
first journey to the North, and had ever been on friend- 
ly terms with the explorer. 

Hall knew Buddington well, having spent much 
time at his home in Groton, Conn., where he was al- 
ways welcome as an old friend of the family. In his 
published book he speaks of him as ^^my noble 
friend," and relates several circumstances which ^o to 
shoAV that he considered Buddington to be what he 
doubtless was, a brave, capable and humane man, un- 
surpassed by any one as a safe Arctic navigator. 

It was these qualities which led Captain Hall to 
select Buddington as navigator of the Polaris. It is 
said that he at first reluctantly consented to go, as he 
had not much interest in an expedition made, as he 
considered, for no practical purposes ; but the large 
pay oifered, costly presents, the promise of a pension 
to his wife in case of his death, and the chance for 
fame if the voyage proved successful, succeeded in 
fascinating him, and he sailed with the expedition. 

Captain Tyson, too, was an old whaleman and had 
been on several voyages. He had resided in ]N"ew 
London since 1853, and Hall had there consulted 
with him in reference to his first journey north. 
Soon afterward he sailed as master of the Georgiana, 
and this ship and the John Henry anchored for a 
while in the same Greenland harbor, where the 
acquaintance was renewed. When Tyson made his 
first trip to sea, Buddington was mate of the vessel in 
which he sailed. 



700 ON THE GKEENLAND COAST. 

Tyson supplied Captain Hall witli provisions and 
a boat at Eepulse Bay in 1865. He sailed in the Po- 
laris at tlie urgent request of Hall, without any stated 
office, but his appointment as assistant navigator was 
sent on by the steamer Congress and reached him at 
Disco. 

Joe and Hannah were the American names of 
Hairs Esquimaux friends Ebierbing and Tookoolito, 
who, since their second arrival in the United States, 
had been living in Groton near the residence of Cap- 
tain Buddington. Mr. Chester, the first mate of the 
Polaris — an enterprising, reliable, and most capable 
man — was also a resident of Groton. 

The Polaris stopped at New London, left there on 
the 8d of July, and arrived at St. John's, Newfound- 
land, on the 11th, where the party were hospitably 
entertained. During their stay here a reception and 
]}anquet were given to the officers at the house of the 
Governor; and the explorers left on the 19th, accom- 
panied by the good wishes of the inhabitants. 

On the 27th of July the Polaris entered the harbor 
of Fiskernaes, Greenland, the birth-jDlace of Plans 
Christian, whose services Capt. Hall wished to secure. 
Hans, however, was not there, but at a settlement 
further north. Continuing on, the explorers reached 
Holsteinberg on the 31st, and there met Captain Von 
Otter's Swedish Arctic Expedition which was then 
on its way home. 

Leaving Holsteinberg on the 3d of August, the 
Polaris anchored the next day oif the port of God- 
haven or Lievely, on the island of Disco, and there 
awaited the arrival of the U. S. steamship Congress, 
which had been sent to carry coal and provisions for 
the use of the expedition. The Congress arrived on 



DISSEI^SIONS AT DISCO. '701 

the lOth ; a part of lier cargo was taken on board 
tlie Polaris and tlie balance stored on sliore. 

While at Godliavn some dissensions arose, or were 
known to exist, among tlie officers of the expedition. 
Tyson says that Hall had some difficulty with Bud- 
dington at St. John's about some sugar or milk, and 
threatened to send him home ; that Bnddington was 
a disorganizer from the start, associating too much 
with the crew and talking to them slightingly of the 
commander as being no seaman, etc ; although respect- 
ful and subordinate in the presence of Hall. There 
was also a difficulty between Hall and Bessels and 
Meyer, which the latter says arose because Hall pro- 
hibited him from making any meteorological observa- 
tions, as he wanted him to attend solely to the navi 
gation of the ship and to keep Hall's journal. He 
says that Bessels also claimed his services, and expect- 
ed him to do the chief part of the scientific work; 
that the two principals consulted together, but not in 
the most friendly manner, and that Bessels informed 
Hall that he would return to the United States also, 
if Hall sent Meyer back as he had threatened to do. 

Mr. Meyer says further, that the chief engineer 
hearing of these prccsedings, declared that he too would 
leave if Bessels did, and that the crew generally were 
disposed to do the same ; that under these circum- 
stances, rather than have the expedition broken up, 
he told Captain Hall that he would do as he wished 
him to rather than be the cause of dissension. Hall 
then told him that if he would keep the journal he might 
devote the balance of his time to scientific subjects ; 
and thus the matter was settled. 

John Heron, the steward, evidently a reliable man, 
says that Meyer refused to do some writing for Hall ; 



702 



THE EXPEDITIO]^ AT UPERJSTAVIK. 



tliat Hall told liim that lie commanded the expedition, 
and that Meyer said he had his orders from head- 
qnartei's ; that Hall asked him to produce these orders, 
and that Bessels " took the thing up and said that if 
Meyer wanted to go ashore he could do so ; the men 
said if he did they A^ould do the same. Captain Hall 
then went and spoke to the men ; the consequence 
was, Meyer Avent to his duty, and Bessels to his. 

What Buddington and Bessels say as to these mat- 
ters will be related hereafter. It is evident that the 
arrival of the Congress at Disco had a salutary effect 
on the discontents, and that through the interference of 
Commander Davenport of that steamer, who ex- 
pounded the law, the authority of Captain Hall, and 
an apparently good understanding among all parties 
were re-established. 

The Polaris left Godhavn on the 17th of August, 
amid the cheers of the crew of the Congress, and ar- 
rived the next day at Upernavik where she took on 
board Hans Christian, the Esquimaux who had accom- 
panied Drs. Kane and Hayes in their voyages to the 
North, with his wife and three children ; also some 
dogs, seal-skins and coal. On the 21st the voyage 
north was resumed, and at Tessuisak, which was 
reached the next day. Captain Hall made his last 
adieu to the civilized world in the following letter, 
which reached its destination by way of Copenhagen 
in just about one year after it was written. Nothing 
later respecting the ex^^edition was known by civilized 
people until a portion of the cre^v were rescued from 
the ice nearly two years subsequently, as related in 
next chapter. 



hall's letter feom tessuisak. ^03 

Latitude 73^ 21 ^10^^ Longitude 56*^ 54,^ Sf,^ W., 
United States Steamship Polaeis, 

TossAc OE Tessuisak, Geeenland, 

August 22d, 1871. 

SiE — I have the honor to report my proceedings 
since tlie dates (August 20tli and 21st) of my last 
communication, written at Upernavik. It was 
half -past eight P. M. of August 21st when we left 
the harbor of Upernavik, having on board Govern- 
or Elberg, of whom I made previous mention, and 
several of his people, bound for this place on a vis- 
it. After steaming twelve miles to the northwest and 
westward we hauled up in front of a small island 
settlement called King-i-toke, where Governor Elberg 
and myself, with a boat's crew, went ashore to pur- 
chase dogs, furs and other requisites for the expe- 
dition. I was able, after considerable difficulty, to 
get eleven dogs to add to the number already pos- 
sessed by the Polaris. Having spent two hours at 
King-i-toke we returned aboard. 

At one A. M., August 2 2d, we renewed our voyage 
for Tossac, making our way, by the aid of good na- 
tive pilots, among the numerous reefs, rocks and 
islands with which Upernavik and vicinity abound. 
At half -past five A. M. of the 2 2d Ave arrived at Tos- 
sac. At once I called on Jensen, and to my astonish- 
ment and disappointment found that a mistake had 
been made in any one of us expecting that his consent 
.could be obtained to leave his home at the present 
time. 

By the full consent and co-operation of the govern- 
ment authorities of Denmark resident in Greenland, 
I have concluded a contract with Hans Christian, by 
which he enters the service of the United States E'orth 



704 HALLOS LETTER FROM TESSUISAK. 

Polar Expedition as dog driver, hunter and servant. 
The wife and tliree cliildren are to accompany Hans. 
Tlie prospects of the expedition are fine — the weather 
beautiful, clear and unexceptionally warm. Every 
preparation has been made to bid farewell to civiliza- 
tion for several years, if need be, to accomplish our 
purpose. Our coal bunkers are not only full, but we 
have fully ten tons on deck, besides wood, planks, tar 
and rosin in considerable quantities, that can be used 
for steaming purposes in any emergency, l^ever was 
an Arctic expedition more completely fitted out than 
this. 

The progress of the Polaris so far has been quite 
favorable, making exceedingly good passages from 
port to port — first from Washington to New York, 
thence to New London ; then to St. John's, N. F., and 
thence to Greenland. First to Fiskernaes, then to Hol- 
steinberg, thence to Godhavn, Upernavik, and this 
port (Tossac), the last link binding us to the land of 
civilization. The actual steaming or sailing time of 
the Polaris from AVashington to New York was sixty 
hours, and from the latter place to this — the most 
northern civilized settlement of the world, unless there 
be one for us to discover at or near the North Pole — 
has been twenty days seven hours and thirty minutes. 
There is every reason to rejoice that everything per- 
taining to the expedition, under the rulings of High 
Heaven, is in a far more prosperous and substantially 
successful condition than even I had hoped or prayed 
for. AVe are making every eifort to leave here to-mor- 
row. I Avill at the latest moment resume my place in 
continuing this communication. 

Evening, August 23d, 1871. — We did not get under 
way to-day, as expected, because a lieavy, dark fog 
has prevailed all day, and the same now continues. 



HALL'S GOOD-BYE TO CIVILIZATION. 705 

The venture of steaming out into a sea of iincleiin.ed 
reefs and sunken rocks, under tlie present circum- 
stances, could not be undertaken. The full number 

of dogs (sixty) required for tlie expedition, is now 
made up. At the several ports of Greenland wliere 
we kave stopped we liave been successful in obtaining 
proper food for tlie dogs. 

Aug, 24 : 1 P. M. — Tke fog continues, and we cannot 
wait for its dispersion, for a longer delay will make 
it doubtful of tke expedition securing tlie very liigh 
latitude I desire to obtain before entering into winter 
quarters. A good pilot has offered to do his very best 
in conducting the Polaris outside of the most imminent 
danger of the reefs and rocks. Now, half-past one 
P. M., the anchor of the Polaris has Just been weighed, 
and not again will it go down till, as I trust and pray, 
a higher, a far higher latitude has been attained than 
ever before by civilized man. Governor Elberg is 
about accompanying us out of the harbor and sea^ff ard. 
He leaves us when the pilot does. 

Governor Lowertz Elberg has rendered to this ex- 
pedition much service, and long will I remember him 
for his great kindness. I am sure you and my coun- 
try will fully appreciate the hospitality and co-opera- 
tion of the Danish officials in Greenland as relatin,^ to 
our I^orth Polar Expedition. 

Now, at a quarter past two, the Polaris bids adieu 
to civilization. 

Governor Elberg leaves us, promising to take these 
despatches back to Upernavik and to send them to 
our Minister at Copenhagen by the next ship, which 
opportunity may not be until next year. God be with 
us. Yours ever, C. F. HALL. 

To Geoege M. Robeson, Secretary of the Navy, 
Washington. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 
ADRIFT ON THE FLOES. 

On the SOtli day of April, A. D. 1873, as tlie steamei 
Tigress, of St. John's, Newfoundland, was steaming 
some forty miles off the coast of Labrador on a sealing 
expedition, she was hailed, about five o'clock in the 
morning, by an Esquimaux, who paddled alongside in 
his Ivvak and called the attention of her crew to a 
group of miserable looking men, women, and children, 
who were adrift on an ice floe, near which, in a dense 
fog, the steamer had providentially come. 

The Tigress immediately headed for the castaways, 
her crew giving and receiving hearty cheers as they 
drew near. Two boats were immediately sent off, 
and. the Avhole party were soon on board the steamer, 
where Capt. Bartlett and his crew of one hundred 
and tAventy Newfoundland fishermen treated them 
with much hospitality and kindness. 

The rescued party numbered nineteen persons, ten 
white men and nine Esquimaux. Briefly, their story 
was a fearful and thrilling one. They were a portion 
of the officers and creAV of the Arctic steamer Polaris, 
and the Esquimaux connected mth the Expedition. 
They were separated from their steamer on the night 
of Oct. 15th, during a snow storm and a heavy gale 
which had suddenly driven the vessel off from the ice 



PICKED UP EY THE TTGRPISS. 707 

floe to wliich slie was fastened, leaving the party 
behind on the ice. Not being able to regain the ship 
or to reach the land, they had remained on the floes 
for one hundred and ninety-six days, dui'ing which 
time, exposed to hunger, and. the winds, waves, and 
frozen convulsions of an Arctic winter, they had 
driftedl southerly some fifteen hundred miles. Capt 
Hall died on board the Polaris on the 8 th day of 
JSTovember, 1871, and was buried in a frozen grave. 
Of the fate of the ship and the balance of the crew 
they knew nothing. 

As the Tigress had not secured a full complement 
of seals she continued northward for several days, 
encountering heavy drifting ice, but meeting with 
poor success in catching seals. On the 7tli of May she 
was headed south, and arrived at Bay Roberts, a fish- 
ing port near St. John's, on the 9th of May, 

Plere the Tigress remained till the 12th of May. 
The party went ashore, and were very kindly received 
by the inhabitants. They were also visited by many 
gentlemen from St. John's, including the ubiquitous 
correspondent of the A'^'?/; Yorh Herald^, mi^ through 
his enterprise the sad news of the death of Capt. Hall 
appeared in that paper of May 10th. The news of 
the disaster to the Arctic Expedition reached St. John's 
on the 9th of May, and. the U. S. Consul immediately 
telegraphed to Washington, H. C, an official announce- 
ment thereof. 

The inhabitants of St. John's have a thorous:li 
knowledo;e of the dans^ers of the Arctic Seas, and were 
able to understand the sufferings and privations which 
the abandoned mariners must have endured ere they 
were rescued. Therefore the arrival of the Tigress 
with the survivors was impatiently expected at that 



^08 EXCITEMENT AT ST. JOHNS 

port, and no sooner had the sliip dropped anchor in 
the harbor on the 12th, than crowds, putting off in 
boats, Ijesieged the decks, and overwhelmed the stran- 
gers with intense curiosity and torrents of questions 
as to the origin of their strange condition, and the 
unparalleled j)owers of endurance which had brought 
them triumphantly through so many stupendous perils. 

But if the excitement on board the vessel was consid- 
erable, the scene as the boats approached the shore 
w^as one of wildest enthusiasm. It lia2:)pened that 
there w^as ice in the harbor, which in certain places 
obstructed their passage, and as the boats' heads were 
turned one way or another to obtain an entrance, 
dense columns of people of all classes moved up and 
down the quays lining the w^ater of the harbor, accord- 
ing as the course seemed to be directed to one point 
or another. 

At the landing an impetuous rush was made to 
obtain a view of the novel strangers. The Esquimaux 
children were carried through the streets on the 
shoulders of some of the prominent citizens, and the 
wdiole party was escorted to homes which had been 
previously provided for them by the U. S. Consul, 
Avho had been instructed by the Hon. George M. 
llol)eson. Secretary of the Navy, to advance money 
and every requisite assistance to the long suffering 
mariners. 

The rescued party consisted of the following per- 
sons : George E. Tyson, assistant navigator ; Frederick 
Meyer, meteorologist ; J. W. C. Kruger, G. W. Lin- 
quist, Frederick Auntiny, Peter Jolmson, Frederick 
Jamka, and William Linderman, seamen ; John Iler- 
ron, ste^v^ard ; William Jackson, cook ; and the follow- 
ing Es(|uiraaux : Joe, his wife Hannah, and his adopted 



HATTS AND HIS FAMILY. 709 

daugliter Piimia ; Hans Cliristian, his wife, and his 
cliildren Augustina, Tobias, Lucci, and a baby which 
was born on board the Polaris only two months before 
the company parted from that vessel. This child was 
baptized during the stay of its parents at St. John's. 

With the exception of Hans and his interesting 
family, all of these persons were members of the expe- 
dition from its start. Hans, his wife, and three chil- 
dren. Joined it at Upernavik. This is the same Hans 
who accompanied Dr. Kane on his second expedition, 
during the trying vicissitudes of which he acted well 
his part. He subsequently went with Dr. Hayes' 
expedition, and has figured in Sunday-school literature 
as the devout Moravian. When Dr. Kane's party last 
saw Hans he was driving south with Shang-hu's pretty 
daughter by his side, and it is presumed that she is 
the present Mrs. Hans. 

The news of the death of Capt. Hall caused sorrow 
throughout the country ; while the meagre story of 
the drift on the ice excited deep and absorbing inter- 
est, mino;led with doubts as to its truth. It was 
claimed that such experiences were unparalleled and 
highly improbable ; and reasoning from the strange 
separation from the ship, the reticence of Capt. Tyson, 
the discord among the officers at Disco, and the suspi- 
cious circumstances attending the death of Capt. Hall, 
the public began to believe that there had been foul 
play somewhere. Not a few accepted the theory that 
Hall had been poisoned by some one remaining behind 
with the ship, and that Capt. Buddington had will- 
fully deserted those who, at his o^vn command, had 
betaken themselves to the ice. The friends of Bud- 
dington claimed, on the other hand, that back of all 
was a story of mutiny and desertion which would 



710 SUSPICIOJS-S OF FOUL PLAY THE FROLIC. 

only be brouglit to liglit by the return of tlie Polaris. 

Under these circumstances, and in view of the fact 
that the Polaris had been sent out by the Government, 
and that it might be in need of assistance, it was con- 
sidered of great importance that the authorities at 
Washington should be put, as soon as possible, in 
possession of full and reliable knowledge of all the 
facts of the case. The Secretary of the Navy there- 
fore, in the absence of any regular communication 
with St. John's, sent the U. S. Steamer Frolic, Com- 
mander C. M. Schoonmaker, to bring the party direct 
to Washington. She sailed from New York, for that 
purpose. May 15th. 

The Frolic arrived at St. John's, May 23d. Taking 
the Polaris party on board, she started on her home- 
ward trip on the 28th, and arrived at the Washington 
'Nsi\j Yard on the 5th of June. Commander Schoon- 
maker reported that he had had no trouble Avith his 
charge, and that they were all well-behaved, orderly 
people. He had formed a very favorable opinion of 
Capt. Tyson, and considered him a remarkably intelli- 
gent man. 

Orders were given that no person should be allowed 
to communicate with any one on the Frolic, and an 
examination of the Polaris party was commenced the 
san]e afternoon at the navy yard before the Secretary 
of the Navy, Commodore William Reynolds, Professor 
Spencer F. Baird of the Smithsonian Institution, and 
Capt. H. W. Howgate of the Signal Service. The 
investigation lasted six days and was very thorough, 
each member of the party being sejiarately examined 
under oath, excepting Mrs. Hans Christian, Punn} , 
and the little Christians. The results of tliis investi- 
gation will be given at length in follovring chapters. 



CHAPTER XLV. 

THE STOEY OF THE ICE-DEIFT PAETY. 

Backed by a glacier and fronted by a bay, Tessuisak, 
tlie most northern abode of civilized man, has the 
characteristic features of an Esquimaux village ; dirt 
and grease all the }■ ear around, dark for four months, 
accessible through the floating ice of an Arctic Sum- 
mer for only two. But Tessuisak has an importance 
of its own. Here Arctic explorers cut the last link 
that binds them to home and friends, here the Polaris 
cast off from civilization, August 24th, 1871, and here 
the history of the expedition as told by the rescued 
survivors of the ice-drift begins. 

For three days the ship steamed up Smith's Sound 
through the usual perils of Arctic navigation. Past 
Kane's winter-quarters and the abandoned Advance ; 
through the bergs with which the great Humboldt 
Glacier on the right filled the sea ; now dodging a 
berg and now sailing past a floe the stout ship went 
on, "going against ice like one berg going against 
another" says one of the sailors enthusiastically. 
Already farther than any vessel had ever sailed to 
the west of Greenland, she still kept to the North 
through Kennedy's Channel, till Kane's " Open Polar 
Sea " was proved a bay and named after the vessel 
that first cut its waters ; till Cape Lieber, for ten 



712 THE POLAEIS IN HIGH LATITUDE. 

years tlie limit of Bortliern discovery, Hayes' final 
acliievement, lay astern, — on, througli a liundred miles 
of new discoveries, into Robeson's Cliannel, now first 
named. 

On Wednesday, August 30tli, tlie mists of ap- 
proaching ice-fields shut around the vessel, and her 
engines were stopped ; she lay beset by ice at a 
higher latitude than any shijD had ever been — 82^16'. 
Parry's sledges, after weeks of toil, had penetrated 
but thirty-four miles farther. The coveted prize of a 
life-time lay almost within Captain Hall's grasp. The 
Pole, over vvhicli he had fondly dreamed of anchoring 
the vessel he commanded, was but five hundred and 
twenty-nine miles away — only four days' sail, and he 
had gone nearly twice the distance in the week 
])efore. The weather was Avarm ; six weeks of the 
long day were still his. A gale from the south, a 
bold dash througli an opening lead, and the Polaris 
mio-ht furl her sails in the starlit calm of a Polar sea. 

After being tied to a Hoe for a few liours the 
Polaris steamed eastward, wdiere Hall in a small boat 
examined an inlet, l)ut as the place ^vas not suitable 
for a harbor he called it Pepulse Bay. He then 
steamed Avestward and fastened to a floe for the night. 
After a council of officers, in which Buddington was 
in favor of gaining a winter harbor without delay, an 
unsuccessful attempt was made to penetrate north, 
and as a I'esult, the Polaris was soon helpless in the 
midst of the i:)ack, and for four days drifted southerly 
witli it. 

When released from the ice the Polaris was headed 
eastward, and, at a small inlet of Polaris Bay, found 
a tolerably secui'e anchorage in the lee of a stranded 
ice-bei'g in latitude 81*^38^. Only ten days had 



THAKK GOD HARBOR. 713 

elapsed since tlie voyage from Tessuisak was com- 
menced ; but tlie dangers escaped were enougli to give 
tlie little inlet it's name of Thank God Harbor, and 
tlie hospitable berg was dignified witli tlie title of 
Providence Berg. At midnight, in the full light of 
an Arctic summer, Captain Hall made a formal land- 
ing on the coast he had discovered, and raised over it 
his flag, " in the name of the Lord, and for the Presi- 
dent of the United States." 

In a few days the Polaris was firmly frozen in the 
ice. The sloping side of Providence Berg, sixty feet 
high, protected the vessel seaward. High cliffs, bare 
and brown, rose landward to the height of nearly 
two thousand feet, and sank away into the hills 
which bounded a broad and wide shore plain. The 
Polar Star stood so nearly in the zenith that actual 
measurement was required to prove it to be eight 
degrees north. In the coming spring and summer 
Capt. Hall hoped to place it directly over his head. 
The mountains of inner Greenland lifted their white 
crests fifteen miles away, and already began to shut 
out the sunlio;ht in its circlino; march around the 
horizon. 

The sides of the Polaris were banked with snow 
and her deck roofed from stem to stern with canvas. 
The dogs, fifty-four in number, were taken ashore 
and placed in kennels, v/here they were fed twice a 
week. The observatory, a frame building made in 
New York, was erected on the cliffs at an elevation 
of seventeen hundred feet. Provisions were put on 
shore, and the other usual preparations for spending 
an Arctic night in high latitudes completed. 

Three or four weeks of daylight still remained and 
they were busily employed. Hans and Joe brought 



714 hall's joukney to the north. 

in musk-oxen, liares, lemmings, and specimens of a 
small burrowing rat. White foxes were found ii; 
large numbers. The valleys bore bright-colored 
flowers, red and blue being the prevailing tints, and 
trailing willows — the only representatives of the trees 
of a warmer clime. The sea swarmed with the minute 
life of an Arctic ocean, and the air was populous with 
the birds with which previous chapters have made 
the reader familiar. 

As he surveyed all these tokens of a still warmer 
climate further north, it must have been with no 
ordinary hopes of success that Captain Hall looked 
forward to the sledge Journeys of the coming spring ; 
and preliminary thereto he left the Polaris on the 
10th of October, accompanied by Mr. Chester, Joe 
and Hans, with two sledges and fourteen dogs. 

Setting out on this expedition, the first step taken 
by Captain Hall fell upon land more northern than 
white man's foot had ever before touched. In the 
progress of the journey — unha23pily the last that 
Captain Hall was to make toward the Pole — ^he dis- 
covered a river, a lake, and a large inlet which he 
named Newman's Bay. At Cape Brevoort, he 
rested, and there wrote his last dispatch to the 
Secretary of the Navy, the original draft of which 
A\'as found, in his own handwriting, in his writing- 
desk, on its examination in Washington after it was 
delivered to the Secretary of the Navy by Joe, who 
had kept the desk in his custody from the time it was 
picked up on the ice, after the separation of the 
rescued party from the shii^. This dispatch is as 
follows : — 



hall's last dispatch. 'tis 

Sixth Snow-house Encampment, Cape Brevooet. 
J^OKTii SIDE Entrance to JSTewman's Bay, 
{latitude 83^ 3' north, longiticde 61^ 20' west), 

October 20, 1871. 
" To the Honorable Secretary of the United States 

]N"avy, Georg-e M. Robeson : 

"Myself and party, consistinf^ of Mr. Chester, first mate, 
my Esquimaux Joe, and Greenland Esquimaux Hans, left 
the ship in winter-quarters. Thank God Harbor, latitude 81^ 
38' north, longitude 61* 44' west, at meridian of October 10, 
on a journey by two sledges, drawn by fourteen dogs, to 
discover, if possible, a feasible route inland for my sledge 
journey next spring to reach the North Pole, purposing to 
adopt such a route, if found, better than a route over the 
old floes and hummocks of the strait, which I have denomi- 
nated Eobeson Strait, after the honorable Secretary of the 
United States Navy. 

^' We arrived on the evening of October 17, having dis- 
covered a lake and a river on our way ; the latter, our route, 
a most serpentine one, which led us on to this bay, fifteen 
miles distant from here, southward and eastward. From 
the top of an iceberg, near the mouth of said river, 
we could see that this bay, which I have narned after 
E-ev. Dr. Newman, extended to the highland eastward 
and southward of that position about fifteen miles, making 
the extent of Newman's Bay, from its headland or cape, 
full thirty miles. 

" The south cape is a high, bold, and noble headland. I 
have named it Sumner Headland, after Hon. Charles Sumner, 
the orator and United States Senator; and the north cape, 
Brevoort Cape, after J. Carson Brevoort, a strong friend to 
Arctic discoveries. 

" On arriving here we found the mouth of Newman's Bay 
open water, having numerous seals in it, bobbing up their 
heads ; this open water making close both to Sumner Head- 
land and Cape Brevoort, and the ice of Eobeson Strait on 
the move, thus debarring all possible chance of extending 
our journey on the ice up the strait. 



716 hall's last dispatch. 

" The mountainous land (none other about here) will not 
admit of our journeying further north, and as the time of 
our expected absence was understood to be for two weeks, 
we commence our return to-morrow morning. To-day we 
are storm-bound to this our sixth encampment. 

" From Cape Brevoort we can see land extending on the 
west side of the strait to the north 22^^ west, and distant 
about seventy miles, thus making land we discover as far as 
latitude 83^ 5^ north. 

"There is appearance of land further north, and extending 
more easterly than what I have just noted, but a peculiar 
dark nimbus cloud that constantly hangs over what seems 
may be land prevents my making a full determination. 

" On August 30, the Polaris made her greatest northing 
latitude 82° 29 ' north ; but after several attempts to get her 
further north, she became beset, when we were drifted down 
to about latitude 81^ 30 ^ When an opening occurred we 
steamed out of the pack and made harbor September 3, 
where the Polaris is. [Corner of the manuscript here 
burned off] 

" Up to the time I and my party left the ship all liave 
been well, and continue with high hopes of accomplishing 
our great mission. 

" We find this a much warmer country than we expected. 
From Cape Alexander the mountains on either side of the 
Kennedy Channel and Robeson Strait we found entirely 
bare of snow and ice, with the exception of a glacier that we 
saw covering about latitude 80^ 30' east side the strait, and 
extending in a east-northeast direction as far as can be seen 
from the mountains by Polaris Bay. 

" We have found that the country abounds with life, and 
seals, game, geese, ducks, musk-cattle, rabbits, wolves, foxes, 
bears, partridges, lemmings, etc. Our sealers have shot two 
seals in the open water while at this encampment. Our long 
Arctic night commenced October 13, having seen only the 
upper limb of the sun above the glacier at meridian October 
12. This dispatch to Secretary of the Navy I finished this 
moment, 8.23 p. m., having written it in ink in our snow-hut, 



DEATH OF C APT Am HALL. 7l7 

the thermometer outside minus 7®. Yesterday all day the 
thermometer mmus 20 to 23°; that is, 20^ minus to 23^ 
minus Fahrenheit." 

"Copy of dispatch placed in pillar, Brevoort Cape, 
October 21, 1871." 

Captain Hall had hoped, when he left the Polaris 
on this journey, to advance northward at least a hun- 
dred miles ; but after having gone about fifty he was 
compelled, by the condition of the shore and of the ice 
and by the state of the climate, to return and await 
the approach of spring for another attempt. He 
reached the ship on the 24th of October, appar- 
ently in his usual health, but was attacked the same 
day with sickness of the stomach and vomiting; and, 
taking to his bed, the next day was found to be se- 
riously ill. Dr. Bessels attended him professionally, 
and he recovered sufficiently to leave his bed, to move 
about his cabin a little, and to attempt to attend to 
business ; but he soon had a relapse, became again de- 
lirious, and died on the 8th of November 1871, from 
attacks of apoplexy, as was generally reported and 
believed. 

During his illness. Captain Hall was nursed by the 
faithful and affectionate Hannah, and she and her 
husband were greatly grieved at the loss of their old 
and well-tried friend. The following is her account 
of his sickness : — 

" About an hour after getting on board, Captain 
Hall sent the little girl to call me up. I found Mr. 
Morton undressing him and washing his feet. Cap- 
tain Hall was sick. He spoke about being sick and 
vomiting. I asked him if he had got cold. He said 
he felt well enough in the morning. ISText day very 
sick. Worse than last night. I observed him close. 

41 



718 JOE^S STORY. 

He was very sleepy. He felt bad. Did not say 
much. 

" After lie had been bad about the head he beo-an 
to get better. Then he talked about the coffee. Said 
it made him sick. Too sweet for him. When some- 
thing was the matter with his head, and he was hal- 
looing and talking, he talked of somebody having 
poisoned him, but only when he was crazy. I do not 
believe any body had poisoned him." 

Joe, who accompanied Capt. Hall to Newman^s 
Bay, gives the following account of his sickness and 
death : — 

"I had driven sledge very hard, and after supper 
went to sleep down stairs. Captain Hall did not eat 
supper, but only took cup of coffee. I did not see 
him that night. I saw him next morning, Sunday 
morning. He did not speak. He remained abed. 
After breakfast he asked to speak to me. He says, 
* Very sick last night.' I asked him * What is the mat- 
ter.' He says, ' I do not know. I took a cup of coffee. 
In a little while very sick and vomiting.' He was 
sick the first time two or three days. Complained 
of stomach, headache, and bone-ache. After he got 
better I go see him every day — every night. After a 
while something the matter with head. Did not 
know anything. Perhaps crazy. I tried to speak 
him. He did not know me. I wish to stay with him. 
Captain Hall called me to stay with him. After he 
got better, I asked him what made him sick. He 
says, ^ I don't know.' Everybody went to breakfast. 
I staid with him. I said I was very glad he was 
better. He said ^ I have been sick. Don't know 
whether I will live or not.' I asked him, ^ Do you 
know Avhat is matter ? ' He says, * I can't tell what 



rUNEEAL OF CAPTAIN HALL. 719 

is tlie matter. Bad stomach. Very bad stomach.' 
After getting breakfast I wanted to find out what 
was the matter with him. A man came down into 
the cabin, and he said nothing to me more. After 
that Hannah talked to him. Every morning I was 
absent seal -hunting. I overheard Captain Budding- 
ton talk about Captain Hall. I wanted to hear. 
Captain Buddington said he was sick again. Did 
not know me. Once in a while he called, ^ Halloo, 
Joe ! ' Then did not know me. Two nights he was 
very sick. Died two nights and one day after." 

It takes two days to dig a grave with picks and 
ice-chisels and axes in the flint-like ground, and on 
the third day after his death, the crew, dressed in 
their Arctic clothing and with lanterns in their hands, 
bear to his long rest the remains of their loved and 
honored commander. The bier, covered with the 
national flags, rests on a sledge which the men, in 
procession, two by two, draw gently by the rope. Fol- 
lowing the sledge, the Esquimaux straggle on in 
bewilderment and grief at the scene. The flag on 
the observatory droops at half-mast, and the ice-bound 
waters of Polaris Bay shimmer in the clear light of 
the stars and in the more fitful gleams of the 
evanescent Auroras. At the grave, by the light of 
" lanterns dimly burning," Mr. Bryan reads the fune- 
ral services. 

A rude head-board marks the shallow restinsr- 
place of the lost explorer. For long months round it 
sweeps the un setting sun in the long circles of an 
Arctic day, and over it shines the Polar star. It is 
fitting that they, and they alone, should keep watch 
and ward over the grave of one who so nearly stole 
from Nature, secrets which their eyes alone have 
rested on. 



720 THE WmTER AT POLAEIS BAY. 

Ten days after Captain Hall's bunal, the Polaris 
felt the first real dangers of Arctic navigation. For 
forty-eight hours a severe gale accompanied by a 
snow-storm swept from the north-east, and the ice 
around the ship began to crack and the snow-w^all, 
laboriously banked as a protection for the winter, to 
settle. The next day the ice broke all around the 
vessel, the snow-wall sunk out of sight, and in the ice 
that crashed in about the ship from the shore, her 
port anchor ceased to hold. It was a moment of 
intense peril. In the darkness of a ivhirling snow- 
storm and an Arctic night, so dense that objects 
twenty feet distant were invisible, she was drifting — 
drifting, with the sloping wall of Providence Berg 
full in her lee. Pier starboard anchor rattled down, 
but the Polaris dragged two anchors as easily as she 
had one. Forced on by the ice, and driven by the 
moving hurricane, the crew watched niomentarily for 
the wall of sloping ice that was to wreck or save 
their craft. For two hours they kept their watch 
throuo;h the wreath in 2: snow. The vessel was less 
than half its OAvn length from the berg when the 
great white wall that rose half mast high above them 
was discovered by the anxious crew. 

Providence Berir was a^cain their salvation. Vol- 
unteers were called for to moor the ship to the berg. 
William Linderman, seaman, performed the danger- 
ous duty. Cutting steps in the smooth icy slope 
with a hatchet, he fastened an ice-hook. Other lines 
were made fast aft in the same manner, by fastening 
heavy iron hooks, weighing seventy-five pounds, in 
the berg, and the vessel rode once more in safety. 
Some of the stores and three of the sleighs, one a 
companion of Dr. Kane, were lost in the breaking ice; 
^^'•^-nntely the dogs were in safety o^ board. 



THE WINTEE AT POLARIS BAT. 721 

A week later and anotlier gale broke from a di- 
rectly opposite quarter— the soutk-west. The iceberg 
to which they had moored in their peril seemed 
likely to prove their destruction. Ice from the strait 
without crowded in upon it. The immense mass 
moved slowly toward the little steamer which lay moor- 
ed twenty feet from its base. Under the enormous 
pressure the great block of ice broke. It must have 
sounded like the crack of doom to the seamen, who 
saw their only protection from southerly gales - part- 
ing before them. Half of the berg drifted on to the 
vessel The ice had been piled high and deep behind 
her by the previous gale. There was small chance of 
moving shoreward. When the nip came she rose 
bodily in the air. Foot by foot, her timbers crack- 
ing, her seams opening, her whole frame quivering in 
the terrible embrace, the Polaris rose. A projecting 
spur struck her, and the ship went over till her deck 
was too steep to walk upon. There on her beam 
ends she lay the winter through. 

The long winter wore away. There was little to 
relieve the dreary monotony of enforced idleness. 
The steep, sloping deck was roofed with canvas and 
dimly lighted by a lantern. Below, there was 
warmth, comfort, and comparative luxury. No better 
proof of the thorough and careful equipment of the 
Polaris, or of the excellence of the stores, and we 
may add of the discipline of her commander, in spite 
of testimony to the contrary, need be given, than the 
fact that the whole winter passed without a case of 
scurvy. Some few symptoms were felt, but they all 
disappeared under treatment. 

Without the vessel, silence, cold, desolation, reign- 
ed supreme. By the side of the steamer rose the 



722 OUTSIDE THE SHIP. 

jagged and splintered sides of the berg, gleaming 
brightly in the moonlight, reddened by auroral flash- 
es, or standing white and ghostly under the stars. 
Across the heaped and broken shore-ice a well trod- 
den path led to the observatory. Hourly observa- 
tions were held there, and the path was a familiar one ; 
but when a storm came, and the berg faded out of 
sight, and the whole atmosphere was full of driv- 
ing snow so fine that it sifted through clothing and 
could only be kept out by furs, men staggered 
along the familiar track, scarcely able to reach the 
ship, but a few yards off. Near by were the huts 
in which the Esquimaux of the expedition passed 
the winter. 

The Polaris lay undisturbed on her icy dock, but 
terrific gales kept the strait ice in motion. Bergs 
were continually sweeping it clear of ice and at no 
time was it closed by ice more than a few wrecks old. 
The entire mass showed clear signs of a drift south- 
ward. This fact and the drift-wood discovered in a 
journey afterwards undertaken, prove that Smith 
Sound and the chain of straits above it, all communi- 
cate at length with open water. To reach this, if 
possible, in boats was now the object of the explorers. 

The work was begun promptly. In the darkness 
of the last week in January, Dr. Bessels pushed to 
the north in a sledge with eight dogs and two mem- 
bers of the crew. Nine miles away they were checked 
by an ice-bound cape, which they could not climb, 
and returned, having noted only that the ice in the 
strait was drifting loosely in the current. The next 
day another party made an attempt along the mount- 
ain chain, but with equal ill-success. The steep ice- 
clad cliffs could not be scaled. It was too plainly 



EETUEIN-ING DAY. 723 

the niglit when no man can work. They must wait 
for daylight. 

A month later, February 28th, as noon drew near, 
there came a glad cheer from the little company. 
For a hundred and thirty-four days they had timed 
the hours by their watches, by the stars, by the moon, 
by everything except daylight; and now the stars 
faded utterly away, and the sun rose over the glisten- 
ing peaks of the mountains that had fringed for a 
month past the twilight of the coming day. In a 
few moments the sun was gone. But the long dark- 
ness was over. The greatest extreme of cold was yet 
to come ; there were yet four months of weary wait- 
ing in the ice; but henceforth daily the sun rose 
above the horizon, and the diaries and conversations 
of the men all take a more cheerful turn. 

Early in March Hans patience was rewarded by a 
seal, and before April was gone nearly all the game 
had returned. Strangely enough the musk-oxen came 
from the north-west. These animals were smaller than 
those found in Labrador, and without the strong musky 
smell w^hich makes their flesh unpalatable. With their 
long, shaggy hair and short, sharp horns, they seemed 
formidable antagonists, and generally adopted the 
same tactics which they use when attacked by wolves. 
Standing in pairs they would rush forward a few 
feet towards the hunters, and then spring back again. 
When one fell the other defended him, till he too 
was struck down by a bullet. As spring advanced 
they were found with their calves, but the young 
were rarely perceived till the dams were shot down, 
as they took refuge when attacked directly under the 
older animals, and were entirely concealed by the 
long hair which came to the ground. Several bears 



724 BEAR HUNTIIs^G. 

were killed, all smaller tlian tLeir brethren of South- 
ern Greenland. The tenacity of life which the dogs 
displayed was wonderful. Caught up by an enraged 
bear and flung against clumps of ice, stunned, 
and left for dead, they were sure to limp into camp 
the next day, but little the worse for the experience. 

Three exploring expeditions were undertaken — two 
on sledges and one by boat. The first in April, 
comprising Dr. Bessels, Mr. Bryan, Hans and Joe, 
pushed forty miles to the south, and linked the dis- 
coveries of the " Polaris " with those of the " Advance." 

Drawn by eight powerful wolfish dogs, the explorers 
pushed on till stopped by open water along the shore, 
and by the steep coast. Two fiords were passed and 
mapped to their termination. These deep and nar- 
row indentations of the sea are as prominent a feat- 
ure of the Greenland as of the Norwegian coast. 
The two explored were surrounded by glaciers and 
filled with icebergs. Their sides rose steeply from 
the water, often to a height of^iearly seven hundred feet. 
These lake-like inlets are of rare beauty and of pecu- 
liar geological interest, but were a serious bar to the 
rapid exploration of the coast. A month later a 
double expedition was sent northward to survey 
Newman's Bay and search for open water. 

On shore the snow was rapidly melting, and the 
valleys and ravines were rushing torrents of water. 
Dangerous crevasses in the glaciers which must be 
crossed made further travel by sleighs out of the ques- 
tion. Journeys with boats were therefore attempted, 
and it is scarcely possible to exaggerate the pluck 
and persistence exhibited therein. One party had 
encamped for the night on an ice-field a mile from 
shore, when they were suddenly awakened by 



EXCURSIONS TO THE NORTH. '725 

another field drifting down on them. In an instant 
the smooth field on which they were, seamed and 
cracked in every direction. Hummocks sprang np 
under their feet. Great cakes of ice rose twenty, 
thirty feet in the air, and fell with a deafening crash. 
The ice opened and the party were separated, two on 
one piece, while the boat and crew were on another. 
In another instant the boat itself lay flat beneath 
a fragment of an iceberg which had moved into the 
field. Nothing daunted, the party returned to the 
vessel, and in four days were afloat in a canvas boat. 
For two weeks, the two crews of four men each, 
accompanied by Tyson, Chester, Bessels, and Meyers, 
continued their dangerous work. 

It was the old, old story of Arctic adventure. 
Leads opening to close again in a short time. A few 
miles of northing gained by hard rowing and an 
encampment made, only to find in the morning that 
the whole floe had been drifting south. The melting 
ice was covered with water, and their sleeping-bags 
were nightly soaked. The fuel was so nearly 
exhausted that coffee could be prepared but once a 
day, and the pemmican and preserved meat were eaten 
cold. Ceaseless care was needed to preserve the 
boats from a second accident. Often the lives of the 
party would hang on the few minutes of rowing 
needed to reach some safe sheet before the pack- 
ice, drifting down on them, had crushed boat and 
crew. 

Two of the party returned to the ship June 27th, 
to obtain provisions. They found her sinking. Steam 
pumps were running sixteen hours out of the twenty- 
four to keep her afloat. In May, when the ice first 
began to melt, she had begun to leak, and ever since 



726 EXCUESIONS TO THE NORTH. 

seemed to fill as sLe settled. Slie soon floated freely, 
and her condition improving, an unsuccessful attempt 
was made to run to the north to take on the boats. 
Hans was then sent, with orders to the excursionists 
to return as soon as possible ; but it was three weeks 
before all had come back. 

On the 14th of August, the Polaris turned home- 
ward. The voyage up had been accomplished in a 
Aveek ; it was to be eight months before even a part 
of the ship's crew would be rescued from the ice. 
August passed, September wore away day by day, 
October was half over, and the good ship still 
fought a vain battle with ice-floes and bergs. She 
entered leads only to have her timbers strained by 
nips. The young ice encased the vessel, and no open- 
ing came through the floes beyond. The ship steadily 
became more unseaworthy. Preparations were made 
for leaving her at an instant's notice. 

On the night of the 15th of October 1872, in about 
latitude 79^ 35', during a violent gale of wind and 
snow, the Polaris was beset by a tremendous pressure 
of ice, which was forced under her and finally threw 
her over on her beam ends. Captain Buddington 
ordered the provisions, stores and materials, which 
had been previously arranged in readiness on the 
deck, to be thrown overboard on the ice, and directed 
that Tyson and half the crew should go upon the ice 
and carry these stores upon a thicker part of the floe, 
where they would be comparatively safe. He also 
sent all the Esquimaux with their kayaks out of the 
ship, and lowered the two remaining boats upon the 
floe. While thus engaged, in the darkness of an 
Arctic night and in the midst of a fierce gale, the 
hawsers of the Polaris failed to hold her, and she 



BESEETED BY THE POLAEIS. ^27 

broke adrift from tlie floe and in a few minutes was 
out of sight of tlie party on the ice. 

At the time of this involuntary separation there 
were nineteen persons on the ice, but some of the men 
and a large sbare of tlie provisions were on pieces of 
ice separate from the floe. The men were all secured, 
but much valuable food was lost. The party on the 
floe rolled themselves up in musk-ox skins and 
passed the night as best they could. Captain Tyson 
kept guard, and walked the ice, watching anxiously 
for tke morning and looking eagerly for the Polaris. 
The morning came, but with it came no sign of the 
shi]^. 

The next day the party made several attempts to 
reack the land witk tke boats, but failed, notwith- 
standing tkeir most persistent efforts, owing to the 
obstruction of the ice and the violence of the wind. 
During this day the Polaris came in sight to the 
northward, apparently coming toward the floe under 
steam and sails. A blanket was koisted on an oar, 
and displayed from the top of a hummock, and other 
signals made to attract the attention of Captain Bud- 
dington, and strong hopes were entertained by tke 
skipless mariners that tkey would be rescued. They 
were doomed to disappointment. The Polaris ap- 
proached so near that they could distinguish her 
escape-pipe, and they plainly saw her down to her 
rail; but she altered her course and disappeared 
behind an island. Again in the course of the day 
the Polaris was discovered with her sails furled, 
apparently at anchor near an island. It was very 
natural that Tyson and his party in their desperate 
circumstances, should conclude that Buddington was 
either over cautious as to his own safety or indiffer- 



728 THE DEIFT SOUTHWARD. 

ent to theirs, but it must be- remembered that the 
Polaris was in a lealdno; condition and without a 
single boat of any kind, while the ice-bound company 
liad two boats, the kayaks, and a scow in their posses- 
sion. 

Shortly after the Polaris had been sighted a second 
time, a violent gale from the north-east sprang up, 
and the iloe drifted away to the southward, with 
these nineteen persons still upon it. The floe was 
originally of a circular shape and about five miles in 
diameter. Captain Tyson estimated its thickness to 
vary from ten to thirty feet. Much of its surface 
was covered wdth snow and there were hillocks and 
depressions. 

Fortunately a pretty good stock of provisions had 
been saved, and the Esquimaux made some snow 
huts in which the party lived and kept their stores. 
These huts, four in number, were built in the shape 
of an old-fashioned straw bee-hive, about six feet 
high, with a hole at the bottom large enough for the 
men to crawl in. Some old canvas served for 
a flooring on which musk-ox skins were placed for 
beds, and other skins answered for bed-clothes. 
Some pemmican cans were used for lamps ; seals fur- 
nished the oil ; and moss, or canvas took the place of 
wicking. Mr. Meyer made some weights out of shot, 
and daily rations were dealt out, eleven ounces being 
allowed to each person. 

The discipline of the party does not appear to have 
been of the best; indeed, Capt. Tyson states that 
there was little or nothing that could be called disci- 
pline. Every one did as he pleased, and it is not 
strange that Hannah, surrounded as slie was by armed 
and at times hungry men, suffered terribly from fears 



THE EESCUE. 729 

of wliat might happen if the provisions gave out 
entirely. Still all knew tliat tlieir salvation depended 
upon union and mutual co-operation, and there v^as a 
discipline of circumstances, if not of morals and law. 

On the 1st of April, finding their icy quarters much 
reduced by the breaking up of the iioe, they launched 
their boat into open water and pulled towards the 
west, in order, if possible, to gain the coast. At times 
meeting ice too closely packed to get through, they 
were compelled to haul the boat upon it, launching 
her again as soon as a lead opened to the westward 
or southward. In this way they passed a month of 
weary and desperate endeavor. 

Toward the close of April their provisions were 
almost exhausted, and they were one day absolutely 
reduced to less than a biscuit apiece and a mouthful 
of pemmican, when a bear, scenting them on the ice, 
approached them and was shot, and they w^ere thus 
rescued from starvation. Eevived by this good for- 
tune, and strengthened by their new supply of fresh 
meat, they struggled on till the last day of April, 
1873, when they were rescued by the Tigress. 

The incidents of this most extraordinary voyage 
of six-and-a-half months on floating ice, as related in 
the diary of John Herron, are given in a subsequent 
chapter, and in all the records of adventure there is 
nothing of greater interest. 

The safe deliverance of the entire party — men, 
women and children — seems at first almost a miracle, 
but is due in a great measure to the special means of 
escape from danger which the Frozen Zone furnishes. 
The friendly ice-floe abounded with material for 
building shelter from the storm and cold, while it 
drifted the castaways into the vicinity of passing 



T30 



JOE AJS^D HANS. 



ships, and througli a region where the presence of 
seal and other Arctic animals enabled the skillful 
hunters, Joe and Hans — to whom the balance of the 
party are indebted under Providence for their pres- 
ervation — to eke out the supj)ly of provisions which 
would otherwise have been exhausted. In any other 
section, a boat's crew thus left in mid-ocean at such a 
distance from relief, must almost certainly have per- 
ished. 




CHAPTER XL VI. 

JOURNAL OF HERMANN SIEMANS, A SAIL- 
OR OF THE STEAMER POLARIS. 

Amoi^g tlie articles remaining on tlie ice-iloe at the 
time wlien tlie Polaris was separated from a portion 
of its crew, was a diary kept from the commencement 
of the voyage by Hermann Siemans. This diary was 
picked up by the ice-drift party, and has special inter- 
est from the wonderful manner in which it was pre- 
served and as being an intelligent history of the 
expedition — as far as it goes — by a common sailor who 
had the forethought and disposition to keep a record 
of passing events. It was written in German, and 
has been translated into English by E. R. Knobb 
Esq. The most interesting portions are given below. 

The spirit of dependence upon Providence, and the 
habitual recognition of God's mercies are noticeable 
throughout, while the petition on starting, breathing 
the spirit of resignation to whatever might occur, is a 
touching indication that there was at least one person 
in the expedition of strong faith and fervent prayer. 

PEAYER WHEN STAKTIISra. 

" ALL-E::N'owi]srG Fathee, on Thee I call and pray, that 
Thou mayest look upon us in Thy mercy and may be 

731 



732 JOURNAL OF IIEKMANN SIEMANS. 

witli US in tMs cruise to the icy North. Tliou only 
knowest whether we ever on earth shall see again 
our beloved, or whether we shall soon lay down our 
pilgrim's staff. I pray Thee to direct the hearts of 
all'of us, that all on this ship may always bow before 
Thee. Let our eyes always be directed toward the 
heights of Golgotha, where Thou hast borne the bur- 
den of our sins. Lead us to endeavor to gain that 
which only is needed, that we may all say together, 
we know that our Eedeemer liveth. Then, even if 
the iceberg covers our mortal part, or the fierce polar 
bear tears it, ^ve shall have Thee, Saviour, the best 
guide of our heart's ship. Hear my prayer in Thy 
great mercy, and for the Saviour Jesus Christ's sake. 
Amen. 

June 29th.— At 6 p. m. we left New York, and arrived on 
the following day at Hi a. m., at New London, where we 
dropped anchor. In the evening we had divine service on 
board, in which quite a number of members of the Baptist 
congregation participated. 

July 3d.— We left New London, with fine weather. 

Sunday, 9di.— We had divine service from 11 to 12 a. m., 
and Captain Hall promised to have it, with God's aid, every 
Sunday. I was heartily glad that the name of our Heavenly 
Father should thus be hallowed. 

Monday, 10th.— We saw the coast of ^Newfoundland. 

nth.— Several heavy blocks of ice were passed. At noon, 
we entered the harbor of Saint John's, in which there were 
two icebergs. 

On the 19th, we left Saint John's, with God's aid all well 

and contented. 

On the 27th, wo saw the west coast of Greenland and a 
great number of icebergs— some near the coast. At 3 p. m. a 
pilot boarded us in a kayak. At 5:30 p. m. we came to in 
the harbor of Fiskernaes. Greenland, wliich I then saw for 
the first time, is truly a sterile, mountainous country. This 



JOUENAL OF HEEMANiq- SIEMANS. 733 

Danish settlement consists of twenty houses and huts, with 
about seventy people. The houses of the governor had a 
decent appearance, being of wood; but the huts of the Es- 
quimaux were composed of pieces of sod, with so low an en- 
trance that the people could ' only creep into them ; a few 
were covered with seal-skin ; the interior looked very poor. 
The natives live almost entirely on fish; they are quite intel- 
ligent, and there is more brotherly love between them than 
in many Christian communities. Their garments are made 
of seal and reindeer skin ; their boots are generally lined 
with feathers. The women wear jackets and pants like those 
of the male, but they are distinguished by a black head- 
cover, through the top of which the hair hangs out in a plait, 
interwoven with red ribbon ; they also wear short boots, 
while those of the men are long. 

Saturday, 29th. — We left Fiskernaes with beautiful weather. 
At four hours we passed Lichtenfels, where two German 
missionaries live. 

July 31st. — We entered the harbor of Tlolsteinborg, where 
we counted sixteen huts and fifty people. 

August 3d. — We left Tlolsteinborg, and in the morning of 
the 4:tli we came in sight of Disco Island. At 2 p. m. a 
pilot came on board, and at 3 p. m. we anchored off Godhavn. 
This settlement contains twenty-seven houses, with about 
seventy people. 

Sunday, Oth. — Captain Hall with some of us visited the 
church, where also thirty Esquimaux attended. 

10th. — The United States ship Congress arrived from I^ew 
York, with provisions and coal for us. 

17th. — We received some Esquimaux dogs, which are to 
draw the sleighs in our excursions. At noon, Rev. Newman 
of Washington and Rev. Bryan of the Congress came 
on board ; the former preached a sermon and prayed with 
us. At 2 p. m. we left Godhavn with fair weather, and 
passed the same day many icebergs, which compelled us to 
change frequently the course. 

On the 18th, we entered the harbor of TJpernavik. This 
settlement consists of twenty-two houses, inhabited by sixty 

42 



734 JOURNAL OF HERMANN SIEMANS. 

people. Tlie Esquimaux appeared more dirtj tlie farther 
north we came ; most of them looked as if they had been 
smoked. Here Hans came on board, with his wife and three 
children. 

20th. — Toward evening, I ascended a hill, where I prayed 
some hours to God and my Redeemer, and thought of my 
distant dear. I also visited the burial-places, wdiich lay scat- 
tered over the mountains, some almost near the tops, where 
it must have been difficult to carry the bodies. The coffins 
of rough wood were merely placed on the surface, and 
covered with rock. The weight of the latter had burst the 
lids of some, so that the bodies could be seen. The Esqui- 
maux told us that bodies which had been buried very many 
years appeared exactly as when buried. Eormerly the law 
was, among the Esquimaux, that at the death of (he parents, 
the eldest son inherited the property. It is said that some 
of them have enticed their parents into the monnt^nins, and 
then thrown stones upon them, under which they still lie 
buried. 

21st. — We received on board eight tons of coal, and more 
dogs and seal-skins. At Y p. m. the governor came onboard, 
intending to accompany us to Tessuisak. At 8 we left Up- 
ernavik with fair weather, and arrived at 11 off Kingituk, 
where the captain and the governor landed to visit the gov- 
ernor of that place, returning at one o'clock with twelve 
dogs. We then proceeded, and came to on the 22d in Tessu- 
isak Harbor. 

24-tli. — "We left Tessuisak, the northernmost settlement. 
In the evening of the 25th, we narrowly escaped running in 
the darkness with full steam-power against a large iceberg. 
In the night, from the 25th to the 20111, we were surrounded 
closely by drift-ice and icebergs, but with God's aid were 
able to work through them. 

On the 27th, we passed the harbor where Kane wintered in 
18G0 ; and at p. m. the winter harbor of Kane in 185'> (<• 
1855 bore east, distant 14 miles. No vessel but our Polaris 
has ever penetrated farther north on the west coast of Green- 
land. Proceeding farther, we encountered great quantities 



JOUENAL OF HERMANN SIEMANS. 735 

of ice, tlii'ough wliicli we pnslied on north. At 11 p. m. we 
passed Cape Constitution, the northernmost point reached by 
Dr. Kane, in 1854, in sleighs, where he believed to have seen 
the open Polar Sea. On the 29th, we reached Cape Lieber, 
discovered in 1860 by Hayes, on a sleigh excursion. No one 
has ever been farther on the Grinnell Land side ; here our 
discoveries were to begin. The distance of the coasts from 
each other, in the narrow jysn't of the strait, is about 40 miles. 
The land is mountainous and high. At 4 p. m. fog set in, 
and at 6 we were compelled to stop the engines, as we were 
surrounded by great ice-fields, to one of which we fastened 
the ship by ice-anchors and hawsers. At Y p. ni, the fog 
lifted, and w^e could see both coasts, when we again started, 
trying to press through the ice, with which the ship came fre- 
quently in collision. It was very cold, the wind blowing strong 
from the north. We worked along throughout the night to 
6 o'clock in the morning of the 30th, when we saw firm ice 
from one co?.st to the other. Under these circumstances, it 
became important to look for a winter station, but there 
seemed to be none in this vicinity. At 9.30 fog set in again 
w^ith snow, and we had again to fasten the ship to a floe, 
where we lay to YJ p. m., Avhen we saw some clear water 
near the Greenland coast, for which we directed our course. 
Believing to see a small bay, a boat was lowered and the 
place examined, but it proved too exposed for the sliip. 'We 
worked along the coast until midnight, when fog compelled 
us to fasten the ship. 

31st. — We started and continued the search for the entire 
day, but in vain. At 4 p. m. we directed the course for the 
Grinnell Land coast, but the ice prevented us from reaching 
it. At 5 p. m. we made fast to a great floe. 

September 1st. — We saw in the morning a small opening 
through which we worked the vessel about the distance of a 
mile nearer to the coast, where we had again to make fast, as 
we could then not move the ship in any direction. Toward 
T p. m. a strong easterly wind arose, setting the stream with 
the ice against us, the smaller pieces of the latter drifting 
faster than the floe to which the ship was tied. This pres- 



736 JOURNAL OF HERMANN SIEMANS. 

sure broke the hawsers at the bow and the stern, and lifted 
cue side of the ship ahnost bodily on the floe to which Ave 
lay, imperiling her greatly. As the ice pressing from all 
sides aronnd iis had a thickness of at least twenty feet, it be- 
came imperative to provide for emergencies. Provisions and 
stores were carried on deck, and guns, cartridges, two suits for 
each person, <fec., placed within easy reach, so as to land them 
on the ice in case the ship should be crushed. Toward 9 
p. m. the wind abated, the ice ceased to press, and remained 
quiet throughout the night. The following day, in the morn- 
ing, we unshipped the propeller, in order to save it from be- 
ing broken. At 2 p. m. the pressure of the ice began again, 
huge masses approaching the ship. All hands w^ere now em- 
ployed landing provisions and fuel on the ice, in two places, 
so that OTie part might be saved in case the ice should break 
near the other. 

Sunday, 3d. — Divine service was attended to from 11 to 12, 
as usual. The snow fell so thickly as to allow us only occa- 
sionally to see the coast of Greenland, although it was dis- 
tant only two miles. We now drifted quite briskly south. 
Ship and crew appeared to be a ready prey to the ice. But 
there is a God who aids and saves from death ; to Ilim I 
trusted between these icebergs and ice-fields, although I know 
that I do not deserve all the good He grants me. 

September 4th. — At 9 a. m. open water appeared at a few 
places, when everything was quickly shipped again. At 9.30 
p. m. steam was ready, and we began to work toward the 
coast of Greenland where the wind had broken the ice and 
caused an opening. At midnight Captain Hall landed with 
five of us, and planted, in the name of the Lord, and for the 
President of the United States, the American flag on the land 
which we had discovered. We then returned on board and 
let go the anchor at 12.30 a. m. on the 5th of September. 
The place examined proved to be but a bend of the coast ; 
we therefore took advantage of the open water caused by the 
easterly wind along the coast, and resumed our search for a 
harbor southward, but not finding any better place we re- 
turned in the evening to the anchorage. 



JOURNAL OF HERMANN SIEMANS. ISt 

7th. — We lifted the anchor, and steamed about sixty yards 
closer in-shore, behind an iceberg which had grounded in 13 
fathoms water, and promised to protect us against southerly 
and, in part, also westerly winds. 

Sunday, 10th. — We could not use boats any longer, and in 
a few hours the ice grew thick enough to carry us with the 
food for the dogs, that had been housed on shore. After 
divine service. Captain Hall told us that he would call the 
place Thank God Harbor, as the Lord had not only carried 
us through the dangers of the ice, but also protected us 
against the imminent peril of an explosion of the small boil- 
ers, which had not been fed with water, through the neglect 
of tho fireman. 

11th. — The ice had grown so firm that we could employ 
the sleighs. 

The 12th was cold, and snow fell, the wind blowing strong. 
Until then the twilight had remained on the southern horizon 
throughout the nights, but these now grew longer, and soon 
we w^ould have, iii tlie midst of the Greenland mountains, 
the long winter night. But why should we fear the darkness 
around us, if light remains only in our hearts ? Yes, my 
Lord, if I have only Thee, I do not care for heaven or earth. 

Sunday, 17th. — After divine service. Captain Hall enjoined 
us to work hand in hand, like brethren, in order to reach our 
aim for which we had started. He said that he firmly be- 
lieved it to be God's will that all of the wonderful earth not 
yet known should be discovered. 

18th. — Dr. Bessels, wdtli the first mate, Joe, and Hans, 
started on a sleigh, drawm by eight dogs, on a hunting excur- 
sion. 

On the 23d, the sun showed a large halo. At divine ser- 
vice, on Sunday the 24:th, the sermon and prayer were read 
by Mr. Bryan ; they had been prepared by Rev. Dr. ISTew- 
man expressly for the expedition. At 2 p. m. the hunting 
party of Dr. Bessels returned with a musk-ox. 

October 1st. (Sunday.) — The gale ceased, and the weather 
remained beautiful throughout the day. After divine service, 
Captain Hall inform.ed us we were, from that day, to assemble 



738 JOUPwIS^AL OF IIER:\IA]SrX SIEMANS. 

eacli morning at 8.30 in liis cabin for prayer. How ^ood ifc 
is to serve under a commander in whose heart the Saviour 
has begun the work ! We should alwaj^s bear in mind that 
each day and each liour carries us nearer to the end of onr 
pilgrimage, where we have to hiy down our staff. I pray 
the Lord to open my eyes that I may look to Ilim with spir- 
ited conlidence. 

9th. — After much labor we now had carried all onr things 
safely on the hill. About noon of this day, Captain llall, 
accompanied by Mr. Chester, Joe, and Hans, started on two 
sleighs drawn by sixteen dogs on an expedition for the pur- 
pose of reconnoitering in the direction toward the pole. 

13th — One boat had already been transported to the .tliore; 
we now carried there a second, also coal, wood, and other 
things, so that a stock would be on shore in case an accident 
should happen to the vessel. Up to then all hands were in 
good health, for which I daily thanked the Lord. God, I 
pray Thee, let me always be obedient to the teachings of Thy 
holy word with ever greater cheerfulness. May never doubt 
or mockery destroy the consolation alive in my breast. Let 
my whole life be a praise of Thee. The earth is everywhere 
the Lord's; there is evidence even in the highest North that 
an almighty and all-wise Creator has made it. 

13th. — Wo saw the sun rise for the last time in 1871. 

18th. — Began building a snow-wall around tlie ship. 

21st. — We spread over the ship a snow-tent of stout sail- 
cloth, leaving only a small opening for ingress. Daylight 
shortened rapidly. 

Tuesday, the 24th, at 1.30 p. m., Captain ITall returned 
with Mr. Chester, Joe, and Ilans. Captain Hall had not 
felt well for the last three days, and laid down to bed inmie- 
diately. lie vomited, had cramps, and a violent headache. 
They had encountered on the expedition severe cold, and 
suffered greatly. They had not been able to go farther tlian 
fifty miles from the ship in a N.E. direction. 

28th. — It grew dangerous with the captain, his illness in- 
creasing steadily. Prayers and divine service were held for- 
ward for his recovery. The prayers which I sent incessantly 



JOUlllSrAL OF HERMANN SIEMANS. ^39 

to tlie throne of tlie Almighty did not satisfy me ; I, poor 
sinner, was anxious to kneel with him before God, and to 
pray for mercy. 

Nov. 1st. — The captain appeared to grow better, as he spoke 
as sensibly as any of us. 

2d. — The weather was beautiful and calm, although severely 
cold. The snow-wall around the ship was seven to eight feet 
thick, and of the same height as the snow-tent. The snow 
was carried to the ship in sleighs from banks which formed 
sometimes near the ship, sometimes at a distance from it. 

!N^ov. 5th. — Captain Hall grew again worse ; in the wander- 
ings of his mind he said that somebody intended to shoot or 
poison him. 

On the Yth, Captain Hall lay in a very miserable state, the 
entire body being insensible to the touch. In the evening 
he was entirely unconscious of what occurred around him or 
was done with him. At 3.25 on the morning of Nov. 8th, his 
soul left the mortal body. After his death a coffin w^as im- 
mediately made, into which he was placed at 4 p. m. We 
also began to dig a grave, working at it Wednesday and 
Thursday. The earth was mixed w^ith rock, and frozen so 
hard that, although using axes and pikes, we could dig only 
two feet deep. It was done wdth the light of a lantern. 

Friday, the 10th, at 11.30 a. m., w^e placed the corpse into 
the ground. Captain Hall had reached, as I was told, the 
age of fifty years. His body rests in the far North, where no 
civilized human being has ever laid down his head for eternal 
rest, as the place lies 502 miles from the North Pole. Thus 
Lis wish to die in the far North, and to rest where he had 
lived eight years, has been fulfilled. May his remains lie in 
peace till the day of resurrection. 

Sunday, the 19th, after divine service Captain Bord (Bnd- 
clington ?) announced that the morning prayers would be dis- 
continued, as Mr. Bryan was otherwise engaged ; each should 
pray by himself. I, poor benighted sinner, must confess that 
I have to contend many an hour with enemies within myself 
and outside, but hope does not leave me. When kneeling 
far north in a dark corner, or beneath the starry heaven on a- 



740 JOURNAL OF HERMAKN SIEMANS, 

floe, I look with confidence to the mountains from which I 
expect aid. Although not being able to show a single deed 
by which I may stand before the just Judge, I trust to the 
Lord's mercy- 
Monday, the 20th, at 4 in the morning, intending to examine 
the tide-gauge, I was carried away by the storm and thrown 
upon the ice, which was covered with water ; only with great 
difficulty could I reach the opening where the observations 
were made. The snow-drift did hardly permit oj^ening the 
eyes. It blew so violently that the ship was thrown upon 
one side, bursting the snow-wall. At 9 a. m., Mr. Meyer left 
the vessel to look for Dr. Bessels, who had been all night in 
the observatory on shore ; he Avas driven back about twenty 
times wdiile endeavoring to creep up the hill, but finally reached 
the house. Joe and Hans followed, and at 10.30 all four suc- 
ceeded in reaching the ship. 

21st. — At 8 a. m., the ice broke all around us, and we were 
in great peril ; the snow-drift, besides, made it so dark that 
we could not see anything at a distance of five paces. We 
let go the second anchor ; nevertheless, the ship drifted, but 
luckily toward the iceberg near which we lay, and which had 
been named by Captain Hall, Providence Mount. Some of 
us jumped over the few floes between us and the iceberg, 
climbed upon it, and succeeded in fastening three ice-anchors, 
to which the ship was secured by hawsers. 

25th. — In order to bring the ship, which thus far lay at the 
extreme of the iceberg, more toward the center of its long side, 
where it would be better protected, an opening was sawed 
into the ice, through which she was moved one hundred and 
twenty feet. 

Sunday, the SOth, divine service was held, but Captain 
Bord announced that attendance was not compulsory, but he 
would prefer that all should attend. 

28t]i. — At 8 p. m. a snow-storm set in fromS. S.W., which 
soon grew violent, and at 1 o'clock had attained a force of 
forty-two miles per hour, pressing the ice frojn the strait 
against our iceberg, which burst and parted in two ; thus 
weakened, it was pushed against the ship, shaking her all 



JOURInAL of HE11MA]^N SIEMANS. 741 

over and making her crack in all seams. With ebb-tide the 
ship keeled over on one side, while the foot of the iceberg 
pushed beneath her, so as to raise her two and a half feet. 
She careened so heavily that it w^as difficult to walk on deck. 
In this perilous condition it w^as thought proper to carry 
apparel and other stores on shore, as also to place the Esqui- 
maux women and children in the observatory. 

13th, — There has, perhaps, never been an expedition the 
members of which did live so peacefully as we. The ISTavy 
Department had directed that, in case of Captain Hall's death, 
Captain Buddington sliould take command of the ship and 
Dr. Bessels direct the scientific matters and the sleigh expedi- 
tions. Should the two disagree. Captain Buddington had to 
carry the vessel home as directly as possible. As long as 
Captain Buddington held the command, he treated every- 
body properly ; the first ofiicer is also an honorable man, who 
knows how to handle people. 

Sunday the 24:th. — In the evening (Christmas Eve) all 
hands were invited into the cabin, but I did not feel at home 
there. Captain Hall n.ot being any more in our midst. 

On Christmas-day, the 25th, the weather was fine. I vras 
astonished that there w^as no divine service, bat, I believe, in 
America it is more of a feast-day than a holy-day. 

28th. — The ship still careened somewhat with the ri&e and 
fall of tide, as part of the keel was still resting on the foot 
of the iceberg. We tried to break the latter by blasting, but 
did not succeed, the ice being too strong. 

January 1st, 1872. — I thanked the Heavenly Eather, who 
stood by us last year through so many perils, and granted us 
to live into tlie new year, except the dear captain, C. F. Hall, 
wdio now rests in the cold earth of Greenland. 

24th. — Dr. Bessels, with two of the crew, left the vessel in 
a sleigh drawn by eight dogs, to ascertain how far the open 
water extended north ; they could only proceed nine miles 
north of the vessel, where the water was still perfectly open ; 
their further progress was stopped by a cape, which they 
could not pass nor climb, as it was too steep and too much 
covered by ice. At 5 p. m. they returned on board. 



742 JOURNAL OF IIEnMAIs-:^' SIEMANS. 

I 

Feb. 28tli — At noon we saw the snn for the first time in 18Y2, 
after one hundred and thirtv-eight days of darkness. It was 
truly a long dreary night which we had passed, by the Lord's 
aid, in midst of icel)ergs and ice-fields. That day I visited 
Captain Hall's grave, as I had frequently done. How would 
he have enjoyed it to see again God's sun. 

April 8tli — Dr. Bessel's party returned ; all well, bringing 
as trophies the carcasses of a seal and a polar bear. After 
the examination of the fiord and starting back north, Joe sud- 
denly saw the bear; both jumped from the sleigh with their 
rifles, taking hold of the dogs, Joe of five, the doctor of three. 
But these, when they saw the fierce beast coming towards 
them, could not be kept back, and had to be set loose, when 
they at once made fui'iously for the bear. After fighting 
them for five minutes, the latter made for Joe, who allowed 
it to approach within sixty paces, Avlien he fired, reloaded 
quicklj^, and with a second ball finished the beast, which had 
just started for him again after recovering from the shock. 
Tvro of the dogs liad kept back, but the other six fought 
bravely ; one of them was thrown by a blow from the paw 
of the powerful beast so violently against an ice-clump that 
it was left for dead on the place, but the next morning it had 
returned to the snow-hut. 

June 5th — The ship rising steadily above the ice under the 
influence of the warm weather, which now melted the snow 
and ice rapidly, we discovered a dangerous leak on the star- 
board side of the stem at the six-foot mark, where two planks 
had split from the careening of the ship. 

6th. — AVe endeavored to stop the leak, but could not do 
much, as the stem proved to have broken too deep below the 
water-line. 

10th. — Preparations were made for another expedition in 
the patent sail-cloth boat, and in the afternoon Dr. Bessels, 
Capt. Tj'son and four vacu left in it. 

The Polaris we will hardly keep afloat, as she settles by de- 
grees deeper the more the ice upon which the ship rests melts. 
Slie now makes considerable water, and there are probably 
more damaged places under the bow beneath the water-liue. 



JOURNAL OJ nEP.^iANN SIEMANS. 743 

12th. — We left tlie slilp and readied at noon tlie place north 
of Cape Liibken where our boats stood. 

15th. — The strong wind having opened the water consider- 
ably, we pushed the boat into the water and rowed until Y 
in the evening, when we reached the other party, Avliich had 
left Monday, on a great ice-field, at the mouth of ^Newman's 
Bay, where the ice had not yet broken up. 

23d. — In the morning we at last saw, north of lis, a strip of 
open water, and left the field immediately, but had hardly 
rowed two and a half miles when heavy pack-ice advanced 
upon us rapidly. As we could not find in the vicinity an 
ice-field for a station, the harder of the firm ice being covered 
by packed ice, we were compelled to row back half a mile, 
where we met one, and had barel^^ time to draw the boat 
upon it. The other party had done the same half a mile south 
of us. 

26tli and 2Tth. — Storni}^, with snow-squalls and fog, the ice 
continually drifting south. As provisions became short and 
the fuel was almost entirely consumed, R. Kr tiger and I, at 
Mr. Chester's wish, started for an attempt of reaching the 
ship by the land, in order to get more provisions. We went 
by Newman's Bay, and it was truly a severe task to climb 
over the high mountains and through the deep ravines where 
the sharp stones, split by the frost, cut through our Esqui- 
maux boots. We made the distance, however, in twelve 
hours. The ice in Polaris Bay had, for the greater part, 
broken up, and the vessel lay in open water, in her old berth 
close to Providence Mount, which still was agromid ; but she 
was in a poor condition, making so nmch w^ater that the pumps 
had to be worked for sixteen hours out of twenty-four. As 
there were now, besides the cook and we two, no sailors on 
board able to steer the vessel, Captain Buddington, would 
not permit ns to leave again ; he attempted to take the vessel 
to the boats, as the water appeared to be pi-etty open. At 
noon of that day, the ice-anchors were taken in and the ship 
proceeded north with steam and under sail, but we had hardly 
made half the distance to JSTewman's Bay when she w^as 
brought up by great ice-fields and heavily-packed ice drifting 



744 JOUllXAL OF HERMANI^ SLEMANS. 

down upon her. During the niglit she was permitted to drift 
under shortened sail with the ice in the strait to the south- 
ward. 

29th. — In the morning, we again attempted to push on 
north, but failed. At 11 a. m. Hans was landed at a ravine 
north of Cape Liibken, in order to inform Mr. Chester and 
Captain Tjson that they must come with their boats back on 
board as early as possible. The ship then returned to Provi- 
dence Mount. 

30tli. — We succeeded by great labor, in fishing the anchor 
which had now been lying on the bottom for nine months 
and had imbedded deeply into the mud. 

July 1st. — We set Captain Hall's grave in order, covering 
it with stones, so that the earth could not be blown off, and 
planting a sign-board with the name cut in. That was the 
last we could do for our beloved commander. 

At 8 p. m. Dr. Bessels returned with Hans from N'ewman's 
Bay. They had a hard travel for twenty-seven hours, having 
searched long in a ravine for a place where they could climb 
up, but with great difficulty. Mr. Chester, having besides 
Mr. Meyer only two men, was anxious that another should 
be sent him ; but Captain Buddington thought the land-route 
to be now too dangerous, as the water had begun to pour 
j)Owerfully from the mountains into the great ravine. He 
preferred anotlier attempt to reach the party with the ship, 
starting at midnight under steam and sail. 

At 1 o'clock the wind changed to a gale from the N., and 
at 2 ]). m., not having made half the distance, we came to 
the border of ice, which, closely packed, was drifting against 
us. The coast was there too steep to climb it. We set sail, 
and permitted the vessel to drift. At noon of the following 
day we were off the ravine where Hans had been landed 
before. As one man could not go well alone, I was sent with 
liim. Considerable snow was still lying on the mountains. 
We landed at 1 p. m. with a small sleigh for transporting the 
bread, fuel, and other small things which the party was in 
need of, but we liad not gone the third part of the distance 
when the sleigh broke, and we were compelled to carry each 



JOURI^AL OF IIERMAT^N SIEMANS. 745 

sixty to seventy pounds on our bac"ks over the steep mountains 
and throngli the deep ravines. It was the most trying travel 
I ever had ia my life. In some of the ravines the water 
reached almost to our arm-pits, and we had then to climb up 
their sides on our hands and knees ; but with God's aid we 
reached, at 4 o'clock in the morning of Thursday, the 4th of 
July, safely, the boat, after thirty -nine hours, during thirty- 
eight of which I had no dry foot. Since we had left them 
they had no chance to move either nortli or south. We 
carried a letter of Captain Buddlngton to Mr. Chester, in. 
which the former stated that if, after consultation with Captain 
Tyson, they chose to continue tlieir attempt of pushing nortli 
in the boats he was not the man to prevent it, but in' his 
opinion it was preferable that they should return on board, 
as there was better prospect to push on north in tlie steamer, 
should a chance offer, than in the boats ; we w^ould then be 
able to free the ship from the water by the hand-pumps 
instead of the pumps connected with the engine, the coals for 
which were almost exhausted. 

July 5th. — Mr. Chester was anxious to reach in the boats 
at least the 83d degree of latitude, from whence he intended 
to proceed farther with the sleighs on Grinnell Land, which 
extended north ; but Captain Tyson preferred to go on board, 
after securing his boat and stores on the southern coast of 
IS'ewman's Bay in a ravine, one and a half miles inside of 
Cape Sumner. It took from Friday, 11 a. m., to Saturday, 
9 p. m., to move the boat with the stores to the place selected 
by Captain Tyson, in which two men narrowly escaped 
drowning. Having thus secured the boat. Captain Tyson's 
party went overland on board. In the succeeding night rain 
fell some hours, for the first time in 1872. 

10th. — At 4 p. m. the ice opened a little to the southward, 
and Mr. Chester concluded to take advantage of it for going 
on board, as there appeared to be now no chances whatever 
for proceeding north in the boat. At 6 p. m. the boat was 
pushed into the water, and we started, but had hardly rowed 
two and a half miles when we were compelled, on account 
of the drift-ice besetting us again closely, to draw the boat 
on a small ice-field. 



746 JOUE]N'AL OF IIEEMAKN SIEMANS. 

13tli. — -There beiiii:^ no prospect tliat tlie ice would soon 
open and allow us to proceed, Mr. Chester deemed it advisa- 
ble to land the boat and stores by the sleighs and take us 'on 
board overland. At 2.30 p. m. evervthino; was on the sleiirhs, 
and wo started. The Avind increased and, together with the 
roughne.-s of the ice, made progress so difficult that it became 
necessary to lighten the sleighs ; we dropped the sleeping-bags 
and some clothing. When half a mile from the shore, we left 
the sleighs in order to get the things which we had dropped, 
and land them iirst. xin hour after midnight, at last, we 
reached the land at Captain Tyson's boat, thoronghlj wet 
and almost broken down. To save the sleigh and boat now 
was impossible, as it blew so violently, with snow and rain 
squalls, that at times we could hardly keep on our feet. We 
pitched the tents of Captain Tyson, took a scanty meal, and 
lay down. But soon the tents were blown away. We then 
lay down in the boat, which had a canvas cover. There was, 
however, but little rest for us, as in the morning (14th) the 
boat, with everything in it, we included, was, by a terrible 
squall, carried a distance over the ground and thrown against 
rocks, by which two planks were broken, so that it now had 
a great hole in the bottom. "We quickly jumped out to 
secure it, bnt it was caught by another gust and turned bot- 
tom up. By drawing a line several fold around the boat and 
fastening the ends to heavy rocks we finally succeeded in 
securing it. A quantity of clothing and light things, how- 
ever, liad been blown into the water. We then carried the 
tents a distance into the ravine, where we pitched them 
under the lee of the cliffs, and could now, at 9 p. m., seek 
the I'cst we so badly needed. 

15th. — During the night, the ice had parted entirely from 
the coast, so that we could not get at our boat and the sleigh. 

16th. — Wc tried in vain to reach the boat. As there was 
no chance for it before the wind would veer round to the 
north and set the ice again to tlic shore, Mr. Chester directed 
Meyer, Jamke, and Kruger to go on board, while ho and I 
remained to save the boat, if possible, with the Lord's will. 

17th. — Mr. Chester and I went along the coast trying to 



JOURNAL OF IIEEMANN SIEMANS. 747 

find a place where we could get to the boat. At Cape Sum- 
mer, we at last espied a chance and succeeded happily, 
although with great danger, in crossing the broken ice and 
reaching the field upon wdiich our boat was still standing; at 
6 p. m. it was safely on the shore. 

July 22d. — As the strait continued to be beset by ice, and 
our provisions began to fViil, Mr. Chester concluded to go 
wath me on board the ship, leaving the boat, with its contents, 
wdiere it now was. We reached the ship at 11.20 p. m. 

In consequence of the great pressure of the packed ice, 
which had, by the southwesterly gales, been driven in great 
quantities into Polaris Bay, Providence Mount had, on the 
20th during the flood-tide, parted, and the broken pieces 
bad pressed the vessel upon the strand, where at low water 
she had been lying so much on one side that the water almost 
reached the deck. But when we came on board she had, 
with God's help, been floated again, and appeared not to have 
been damaged by it. 

25th. — In the afternoon Captain Buddington disconnected 
the pumps of the engine and divided all hands, the women 
and children excepted, into three watches, each of four hours, 
for pumping by hand. But after having been ashore she 
made not so much w-ater b,y far as previously, some of the 
parted seams having probably closed again, 

August 12th. — In the morning, the wife of Hans gave 
birth to a boy. 

In the afternoon the ice began to loosen and some strips of 
open water appeared. At 4.40 p. m. the vessel left Polaris 
Bay with northerly wind. We worked during the succeed- 
ing night, with great difficulty, through the ice until 8 a. m. 
of the next day, when we were compelled, by the density of 
the ice, to fasten the vessel to a large floe near a small island 
on the Grinnell Land side. We were now without ground- 
tackle. The boats left at Newman's Bay we missed very 
badl^y. We drifted that day wdth the ice slowdy to the south- 
ward, there being no wind, and the weather beautiful. In 
the night, when we saw near us a strip of open water wdiich 
appeared to extend several miles to the southward, we made 



748 JOUENAL OF HEEMA]^]^ SIEMANS. 

repeated attempts, with the fall power of the engine, to break 
through the ice surrounding us, but could not succeed, and 
had to tie the vessel up again. 

14th. — At 2 p. m. we passed Cape Constitution, in latitude 
80*^ 30^ N., and worked steadily on until 11.30 p. m., when 
the ice had closed in again, and nothing remained but to tie 
up to an ice-field. 

18th. — We still lay tied to the same floe to which we had 
fastened on Wednesday ; beset by heavy ice in which no 
opening was visible. 

21st. — At noon the fires were drawn, as both boilers leaked 
and had to be repaired. We had now to work the pumps 
t by hand, the ship making twice as much water as in Polaris 
Bay, as she had received many hard knocks since we left. 

27th. — We had now for some days been almost stationary, 
probably because the ice had packed in the narrow part of 
Smith's Sound. In the evening the ship was towed between 
the fields about a quarter of a mile. 

29th.— Beautiful calm weather. In the evening we again 
saw a large stretch of open water. The fires were instantly 
lighted, and we labored throughout the night with the full 
power of steam, and besides all hands outside the vessel on 
the ice, but could only carry the ship within about one hun- 
dred and fifty yards of the open water, where, at 5.30 a. m., 
we were compelled to tie her up again. 

September 5th. — We tried to stop the leaks of the vessel 
without success. 

30th. — There were this morning quite a number of open 
places north and south of the ship, atid also near her the ice 
began to work with great noise ; but the fields still incasing 
her prevented us from reaching the opening to the south- 
ward. Since August 15, when we tied up the ship to the 
ice in latitude 80^ 02' N., we had drifted, in one and a half 
months, 60 miles to the southward. 

2d. — We were about twenty-three miles N. W. of Kane's 
winter-quarters, and could see the harbor plainly in a clear 
sky. The ice still very Tin quiet. 

October 3d. — Began to erect a liouse on the ice-field to 



JOURNAL OF HEEMANIS: SIEMANS. 



749 



which the ship was fastened, as the latter was in great danger 
of being crushed, and, moreover, the winter now approached 
fast. 

7th. — Mild, with light northerly breeze. Worked on the 
house, and carried ice into the ship, which Mr, Schumann 
intended to use for the small boiler working the pumps, as 
the salt water had crjstalized in it to a great extent. In the 
afternoon Joe shot a seal and discovered that he had been 
tracked the day before close to the ship by a polar bear, 
which the dogs had not scented, the wind being against 
them ; they are generally very keen in this respect. 

9th. — We carried a store of bread into the house. In the 
afternoon one of the crew saw a polar bear between the ice- 
fields, at a distance of a mile from the ship. 

12th. — We had a gale from the N". E., with cold temper- 
ature. Much open water. Drifted more rapidly to the 
south. We were now about three miles from the coast of 
Greenland. 




teMinssji-^A 






^^ ^^ 



43 



CHAPTEU XLVII. 
JOHN HERRON'S DIARY. 

John Herron, steward of the Polaris Expedition, 
was one of the party separated from the ship and sub- 
sequently rescued by the Tigress. Mr. Herron kept 
a journal of the incidents and experiences of the ice 
drift, which extended from October 15th,4Wi, to the ^^ 
ensuing May, and it is in every respect highly cred- 
itable to him. All the important and interesting por- 
tions of this document are given below : 

October 15. Gale from the S. W. ; ship made fast to floe ; 
bergs pressed in and nipped the sliip until -^ve thouglit she 
was going down ; threw provisions overboard, and nineteen 
souls got on the floe to receive them and haul them up on the 
ice. A large berg came sailing down, struck the floe, shiv- 
ered it to pieces, and freed the ship. She was out of sight 
in five minates. We were afloat on different pieces of ice. 
We had two boats. Our men were picked up, myself among 
them, and landed on the main floe, which we found to be 
cracked in many places. Wo remained shivering all night. 
Saved very little provisions. 

Oct. ID. The berg that did so much damage half mile to 
the N. E. of us. Plenty of open water. We lost no time in 
launching the boats, getting the provisions in, and pulling 
around the berg, when we saw the Polaris. She had steam 
up, and succeeded in getting a harbor. She got under the 
lee of an island, and came down with sails set— jib, foresail, 

750 



JOHN liEilUON's DIARY. 751 

mainsail, and staysail. She must have seen us, as the island 
was four or five miles off. We expected her to save us, 
as there was plenty of open water, beset with ice., which I 
think she could have gotten throuoh. In the evening we 
started with the boats for shore. Had we reached it we could 
have walked on board in one hour, but the ice set in so fast 
when near the shore that we could not pull through it. We 
had a narrow escape in jumping from piece to piece, with the 
painter in hand, until we reached the floe. We dragged the 
boat two or three hundred yards, to a high place, where we 
thought she would be secure until morning, and made for our 
provisions, which were on a distant part of the floe. We 
were too much worn out witli hunger and fatigue to bring 
her along to-night, and it is nearly dark. We cannot see 
our other boat or our provisions. The snow-drift has cov- 
ered our late tracks. 

Oct. 17. Strong wind from the S. E. The ice broke up 
again. Our boat and everything we have left are going. 
We are afloat on a very small piece, with very little provis- 
ions left. It is blowing a gale and threatens to be a very 
severe night. 

Oct. 21. Building snow houses ; finished one ; we sleep 
in it to-night. 

Oct. 22. Weather very thick ; snow falling. Building 
snow-houses for the Esquimaux, and one more for ourselves, as 
the first is too small. 

Oct. 23. With the aid of our marine-glass, to our greai 
joy, we discovered in the distance a boat, and at some dis- 
tance therefrom, the tent. The ice for a few miles between 
us and the floe which they are on is very thin, but we must 
risk it, as we have six bags of bread there, forty-five pound- 
cans of pemmican, and two dozen cans of meat. Returned 
to headquarters weak, but thankful to God. Rejoicing in our 
good fortune, we treated ourselves to a good supper, thank- 
ing God for our increase in stores. 

Oct. 24. Four men made another trip to the tent to bring 
some planks with which to make a sleigh. 



752 JOHN hekkon's diary. 

Oct. 25. Half of the men have gone to the tent with the 
sled made this morning, drawn by the dogs. The rest of us 
are remaining here by the boat ready to shove off in case 
the ice should open. Evening the men returned with a sled- 
load of poles. All well. 

Oct. 29. This morning very cold and stormy, but clear. 
The land in sight all the time. We have got our cook-house 
at work. All well. 

Oct. 31. Sent Joe and Hans with a dog-team to see liow 
the ice will stand, as we intend starting to-morrow for shore. 
We have eaten as much as we could to-day to get strength 
for the journey. We have been living very poorly so as to 
make our provisions last six months. 

November 1. Started to-day for the large floe four miles 
distant, and one-third of the distance, I should say, to the 
shore. After a hard day's work we succeeded in getting two 
boats and our provisions off, also one sleigh-load of bed-cov- 
ering, skins, and canvas, and some poles ; leaving three bags 
of coals, the only ones we have left. 

Nov. 2. This morning we were surprised to find the ice 
open all around us. We started before daylight with the 
dogs and sled, not knowing what had happened until we had 
nearly driven into the water. 

Nov. 3. Tliis morning snow-storm. Building snow-houses. 
All well. No chance now of getting ashore ; must now give 

that up. 

Nov. 6. Joe cauglit a seal, which has been a godsend. 
We are having a feast to-night, three-fourths of a pound of 
food being our allowance. Mr. Meyer made a pack of cards 
from some thick paper, and we are now playing euchre. 
Plenty of water around us. We are a good deal further from 
the land, and are drifting south pretty smart. 

Nov. 10. Wind strong; snow drifting. We arc drifting 
fast to the south. The west land is not to be seen. Tlic Es- 
quimaux arc out hunting. Joe has returned late ; Hans has 
not come yet. Joe and Ttobort have gone in search of 
him. He had left the floe for another one, and with great 



JOHN heeron's diary. 753 

difficulty found his way back very late. They saw him com- 
ing, dressed in skins and covered with snow, and took him 
for an ice-hear ; loaded their pistols and made ready, when, 
to their joy, they found it was Hans. 

Nov. 16. Calm, but thick. Joe saw three seals yester- 
day, and a fox track, but got nothing. We have nothing to 
feed our dogs on ; they got at the provision to-day ; we shot 
five, leaving four ; shot some two weeks since. Lining our 
new hut with canvas. 

Kov. 21. The natives caught tAVo seals; they shot threes 
but lost one of them in the young ice. We moved into our 
new house to-day. We shot two dogs — they got at our pro- 
visions ; we have two left. 

Nov. 28. Thanksgiving to-day ; we have had a feast — 
four pint-cans of mock-turtle soup, six pint-cans of green corn, 
made into scouch. Afternoon : three ounces of bread and 
the last of our chocolate ; our day's feast. All well. 

December 1. Calm, but little light. This month out and 
we can hope for the best, as dayliglit will begin to come 
upon us. Fred savf the bear to-day, but being alone dared 
not go for him. 

Dec. 2. Boiled some seal-skin to-day and ate it — blubber, 
hair, and tough skin. The men ate it ; I could not. The 
hair is too thick, and we have no means of getting it off. 

Dec. 5. The fox came too near to-day ; Bill Lindemami 
shot him ; skinned and cut him up for cooking. Fox in this 
country is all hair and tail. 

Dec. 6. The poor fox was devoured to-day by seven of the 
men who liked it ; they had a mouthful each for their share ; 
I did not think it worth while myself to commence with so 
small an allowance, so I did not try Mr, Fox. 

Dec. 7. If w^e keep on this way we will be off the island 
of Disco in March, All in good health. The only thing that 
troubles us is hunger ; that is very severe. We feel some- 
times as though we could cat each other. Yery weak, but 
please God we will weather it all. 



754 jouN heekon's diary. 

Dec. 13. Hans caught a small white fox in a trap yester- 
day. The nights are brilliant, cold, and clear. The scene is 
charming, if we were only in a position to appreciate it. 

Dec. 20. Joe found a crack yesterday, and three seals. 
Too dark to shoot. It is a good thing to have game under- 
neath us. It would be much better to liave them on tlie floe, 
for starving men. To-morrow will be our choicest day — then 
the sun returns. 

Dec. 21. To-day clear ; light wind. The shortest day, so 
cheer up ! In tliree weeks vre will have daylight. Then we 
hope to catch game. 

Dec. 22. Calm and clear as a bell ; the best twilight we 
have seen for a month. It must have been cloudy, or we ai^e 
drifting S. fast. Our spirits are up, but the body weak ; 15° 
below zero. 

Dec. 25. Tliis is a day of jubilee at home, and certainly 
here for us ; for, beside the approaching daylight, which we 
feel thankful to God for sparing us to see, we had quite a 
feast to-day. 

Dec. 29. Joe shot a seal, which is a godsend, as we are 
pretty weak. It is breezing up strong. We have had a good 
supper ; thank God. 

January 1, 1873. Cloudy ; no water ; 29° below zero. 
Poor dinner for New- Year's Day — mouldy bread and short 
allowance. 

Jan. 3. Twenty-three degrees below zero ; very cloudy; 
strong wind ; cannot leave the hut. 

Jan. 5. To-day fell in with two bear-tracks, but cannot 
find them. If we could kill one of these fellows it would 
set us all right. 

Jan. 7. Light wind. Mr. Meyer took an observation last 
night ; latitude 72^" T; longitude 60° 40' 45''. The news was 
so good that I treated myself to an extra pipe of tobacco at 
12 o'clock last niglit. The tobacco is getting very short, so 
that I have to be very saving this month. We are obliged 
to cook our meals with a lamp — pretty slow work. Good 
northern lights last night. 



JOHN hekron's diaby. 755 

Jan. 8. Light wind ; 29° below zero. No water yet. 
Hans's little boy has been very poorly for some time back. I 
hope he will get better soon. 

Jan. 15. Blowing a gale. Snow drifting very badly. 
Our dogs had an encounter with two bears. One of the dogs 
got cut when some distance from the floe. 

Jan. 16. No wind ; very thick. The glass ranges from 
26^ to 31° below zero. Hans caught a seal to-day ; thank 
God 1 for we were very weak. Our light would have been 
finished to-morrow, and our cooking also. But God sent this 
seal to save us ; thanks to His holy name ! It has been so 
all the time. Just as we w^ere played out something came 
along. I am afraid I have a touch of the scurvy. A little 
raw meat will drive it out, I hope. Hans's boy is no better. 
I hope it will do him good also. 

Jan. 19. Clear ; light wind ; 39° below zero. The sun 
has made his appearance to-day. I gave him three cheers, 
hoping we may be able to start a month from now. Thank 
God for this day ! we have long wished to see it. The sun 
has brought us luck in the way of a seal Joe caught. The 
finest display of northern lights that I ever saw came off to- 
night. They had to go about six miles to-day to open water, 
where they saw many seals. 

Jan. 20. We have not seen the E. shore yet. I hope to 
see the island of Disco ; the land is very high there, but I 
am afraid we will drift past it. We cannot help ourselves, 
however. We are in the hands of God, and I am thankful. 
Hans shot a dovekie. I hope he will give it to his boy. 

February 4. A gale from the W. ; very thick snow-drift. 
I seldom see it snow here, for when it is blowing liard the 
snow comes like flour with the wind. Whether the snow 
falls or the wind takes it up from the ice I cannot tell, but it 
is so fine and thick you cannot see. There is no leaving the 
hut in such weather, as the snow is always either drifting or 
falling with the blow, no matter from what quater. Then 
there is no going out, as it fills the ice and will penetrate al- 
most anything. The temperature to-day has been from 16° 



756 JOHN herron's diary. 

to 10" below zero. All arc well, thank God, but me. I have 
a slight touch of the scurvy, and feel very ailing, but, please 
God, it will soon leave me. 

Feb. 14. Very strong wind; thick, and snow drifting. 
We are having a long spell of bad weather. Hans caught a 
seal to day, which will give us anotlier meal. Saw a fox to- 
day near the huts, but not near enough to get a sliot at him. 
Joe hit three unicorns to-day, but I am afraid our chance to 
get one is small. 

Feb. 16. Saw plenty of whales ; wish they would take 
their departure ; they frighten the seals away which we are 
now so badly in want of; our provisions are getting very low. 
When you take a glass and look round, you see the ice in the 
distance piled up as high as a ship's mast, so that it seems 
impossible to travel over it — certainly not with a boat — and 
no land to be seen yet. Wo want water to escape, and, please 
God, we will get it when the time comes. All well. 

Feb. 19. The welcome cry this morning was '' Land ho !" 
to westward. Cape Walsingham. Now we will be out of the 
narrows. The straits commence to widen here so that we 
can travel S. fast if we cannot reach land. 

Feb. 20. Water around ; cannot see land. The seals are 
very scarce here. We must soon get a good lead of water 
running in-sliore, and so escape, or kill plenty of seals to live 
on, else our time in this world will be short. But God's will 
be done. 

Feb. 24. Land is twenty miles off, I should sny, and we 
appear to be leaving it. ^ly advice is to start for it — making 
a sleigh out of some spare skins, loading it Avith provisions 
and clothing, and the kayak to ferry us across the cracks ; 
also, ammunition for hunting purposes when avc get on shore. 
By that means we could leave the boat and travel light, for 
it is my opinion that we will never get the boat over the ice 
any distance. We seem to have left the sealing-ground. AVe 
cannot catch anything to speak of, and we have only three 
weeks' provisions left. Captain Tyson and some of the men 
are afra-d to venture in- shore, and unwilling to leave tho 



JOHN IIErtRON's DIAEY. ' 767 

boat ; so we have made np our minds to stay, come down in 
our provisions, and trust in Gol, lioping wc may drift on a 
better sealing-ground, and tlms live tlirougli it. I asked the 
Esquimaux's opinions about it — what they Avould do if they 
had not us to influence them. They told me they would start 
for land directly they saw it. Tlicy do not like to speak their 
minds openly for fear something might happen — meaning 
they would be blamed for it ; so they are silent, following 
only the advice and opinions of others. Joe is very much to 
be praised, also his wife Hannah. We may thank them 
and God for our lives and the good health we are in. 
We could never have gotten through this far without them. 
If we ever get out of this difficulty, they can never be paid 
too much. Joe caught a very small seal, which makes the 
eighth this month. Northern lights very brilliant to-night. 
All well. 

Feb. 26. A crack of water to the B. Land to be seen. 
We are coming down on our provisions one-half ; that is as 
low as we can come and keep life, and will be a few ounces a 
day. 

March 1. We are drifting S. fast ; can just sec the moun- 
tains in the N. W. Sometimes Peter favors us with a sailor's 
yarn when we lie down at night ; that is, when we have 
had a meal of seal-meat. All other nights we are quiet 
enough. 

March 2. Splendid display of northern lights these last 
two nights. To-day God has sent us food in abundance. 
Joe shot an oogjook, one of the largest kind ; plenty of meat 
and oil ; and forty-two dovckies. It took all hands to drag 
him liome. That was a good Sunday's work ; dragging the 
fine fellow to the hut, and thanking God for His mercies. 
Begins to breeze up, and the snow drifts pretty lively. All 
well and happy. 

March 5. Blowing a gale from the N. W. Snow drifting ; 
cannot get out. Joe went out in the last blow ; it seems to 
me he cannot stay in ; he is a first-rate fellow ; we would 
have been dead men long since had it not been for him. 



758 JOHN herkon's diary. 

March 7. The gale abated this morning. Stiff breeze 
yet, and snow drifting. Immense icebergs all around the floe. 
There was a fearful noise all last night, which kept us aAvake. 
The floe was cracking, splitting, and working in the most 
fearful manner, just like a park of artillery and musketry. I 
expected to see it split into a thousand pieces every moment. 
I feel very bad yet in my head and stomach. The liver of 
bear and oogioolv, they say, is very dangerous to eat. But 
what is a hungry man to do ? 

March 11. Blowing a strong gale yet. All hands were 
up last night and dressed, ready for a jump, for the ice was 
splitting, cracking and making a fearful noise all night. To- 
day has been a fearful day — cannot see, for snow-drift. We 
know the floe is broken into small pieces. We are afloat — 
jumping and kicking about. This is not very pleasant. My 
hope is in God. 

March 12. Last night was a fearful night of suspense — 
ice creaking and breaking ; the gale roaring, and the water 
swashing. But where ? We know it is around us, but can- 
not see anything. Since one o'clock this morning the wind 
has been going down, thank God, and now I can see around. 
A nice picture ! Everything broken up into small pieces ; 
the best piece we arc on. The houses are nearly covered. 
Afternoon : It has calmed down to a flne day, with a light 
breeze. 

Marcli 17. Saw a bear this morning, and gave chase, be- 
fore six o'clock. After a very exciting run of over tv/o 
hours, he got over a large space of water, and we had 
to give him up. Saw a whale and three seals, but got noth- 
ing. 

March 26. Water three miles off Joe caught four seals 
to-day and Hans one — the first of the kind ; they call tliem 
bladder-nose ; they are buggers to fight. I do not know liow 
far S. we sliall liave tliem ; we liavc just struck their ground. 
They are splendid seal — much larger than the others. It 
is very dangerous going out so far ; the ice is so weak, and 
it is so near spring-tide. 



JOHN herron's diary. 759 

March 27. Went out to-day to the old place, but was 
forced to come back. Esquimaux and all pretty lively. It 
is so dangerous we will have to wait until after spring-tide. 
A very agreeable surprise to-night, while at supper. A bear 
came to the hut. Of course, he died ; we buried him in the 
snow until morning. 

March 28. Skinned and cut up the bear ; he is a fine 
young one, very tender and fat, weighing, I should say, TOO 
or 800 pounds. We are making some sausages from him, 
which are very good, I think. I think it is the sweetest and 
tenderest meat I ever ate. The fat cuts like gelatine. 

March 29. Has been blowing very hard since last night, 
and is doing so yet. Surrounded with large bergs ; the ice 
broken up ; water all around. Never saw so many icebergs ; 
we are completely hemmed in by them. Do not know what 
distance we are from land. Nothing to be seen but the old 
sight — icebergs, floes, and water. 

March 30. Blowing a gale from W. N. W. ; it looks fear- 
ful. Last night the sight was dreadful. I went out, and there, 
within ten or twelve yards of the door of our hut, was a 
very large and ugly-looking iceberg grinding against us. Our 
little floe gets smaller in open water. To-day we had the 
pleasure of launching the boat. We saw on a piece of ice a 
large seal ; we fired and thought we hit him. When we had 
pulled there with the boat, we found a large bladder-nose and 
her pup. She showed fight, but was soon killed, and, with 
her pup, towed to our floe. The buck was shot, but got under 
the young ice. 

March 31. We are nearly off Cape Farewell. Last night, 
ran a very heavy sea ; not a bit of ice to be seen as far as the 
eye could reach. To-day closed around a little, but plenty 
of water. Dare not venture in our open boat; we must 
watch and wait and trust in God. 

April 1. A fearful night, last night. Cannot stay on our 
floe ; must leave it at once. Got under way at 8 a. m. ; the 
boat taking in water. Loaded too deep. Threw overboard 
one hundred pounds of meat ; must throw away all our 



760 JOHN hereon' s diary. 

clothes. Cannot carry anything but the tent and a few skins 
to cover us with, a httle meat, and our bread and pemmican. 
We landed to lighten our boat ; pitched our tent, and intend 
stopping all night. 

April 2. Lovely last night. The floe lost several pieces. 
I could not sleep for two reasons : the ice breaking up, and 
too cold. Started at 5 a. m. Worked the oars for two 
hours, then a breeze sprang up and increased until it blew 
almost a gale. We made several narrow escapes with our 
boat before we could find a piece of ice safe enougli to land 
on, and when we did she w^as making water fast. Wlien 
emptied, we found a hole in her side, which we are repairing 
this afternoon. Yfe are in a very bad fix. 

April 3. Repaired our boat, and started. Pulled three 
hours, when a breeze sprang up from N. N. W. We kept 
under way until 2:30 P. M., when we had to haul up on a piece 
of a floe. We were beset by the ice and could not get through ; 
so we encamped for the night. 

April 5. Blowing >a gale and a fearful sea running. 
Two pieces broke from the floe. We are on one close to the 
tent. At 5 a. m. removed our things to the center. Another 
piece broke off carrying Joe's hut with it ; luckily it gave some 
warning, so that they had time to throw out some things be- 
fore it parted. A dreadful day ; cannot do anything to help 
ourselves. If the ice break up much more, we must break up 
with it ; set a watch all night. 

April 6. Blowing a very severe gale. Still on the same 
ice ; cannot get off. At the mercy of the elements. Joe lost 
anotlier hut to-day. The ice, with a roar, split across the 
floe, cutting Joe's hut right in two. We have but a small 
piece left. Canliot lie down to-night. Put a few things in 
the boat and now standing by for a jump ; such is the night. 

Api'il 7. Still blowing a gale, with a fearful sea running. 
The ice split right across our tent this morning at G A. M. 
Wliile getting a few ounces of bread and pemmican, we lost 
our breakfast in scrambling out of our tent, and nearly lost 
our boat, wliicli would liave been worse than losing ourselves. 



JOHN iieerOin's diary. 761 

We could not catch any seal after the storm set in ; so we are 
obliged to starve for a while, hoping in God it will not be for 
a long time. The worst of it is, we have no blubber for the 
lamp, and cannot cook, or melt any water. Everything looks 
very gloomy. Set a watch ; half the men are lying down, 
the others walking outside tlie tent. 

April 8. Last niglit, at 12 o'clock, the ice broke again, 
right between the tent and the boat, Avhich were close to- 
gether, so close that a man could not walk between them. 
There the ice split, separating the boat and tout, carrying 
away boat, kayak, and Mr. Meyer. There we stood, helpless, 
looking at each other. It was blowing and snowing, very 
cold, and a fearful sea running. The ice was breaking, lap- 
ping, and crushing. The sight was grand, but dreadful to 
us in our position. Mr. Meyer cast the kayalc adrifl-, but it 
went to leeward of us. He can do notliing willi the boat 
alone, so they are lost to us unless God returns them. The 
natives went off on a piece of ice with their paddles and ice- 
spears. The work looks dangerous ; we may never see them 
again. But we are lost without the boat, so that Ihoy are as 
well off. After an hour's struggle, we can make out, with 
what little light there is, that they have reached the boat, 
about half a mile off. There they appear to be helpless — 
the ice closing in all around — and we can do nothing until 
daylight. 

Daylight at last — 3 a. m. There we see tliem with the 
boat ; they can do nothing with her. The kayak is the same 
distance in another direction. We must venture off; may as 
well be crushed by the ice and drowned as to remain here 
without the boat. Off we venture, all but two, who dare not 
make the attempt. We jump or step from one piece to an- 
other, as the swell heaves it and the ice conies close together 
— one piece being high, the other low, so that you watch 
your chance to jump. All who ventured readied the boat in 
safety, thank God, and after a long struggle we got her safe to 
camp again. Then we ventured for the kayak, and got it 
also. Mr. Meyer and Fred Jamkins fell into the water. 



762 JOHN hePcEOn's diary. 

Luckily, we had two or three dry shirts left, so that they 
could change. Most every man is more or less wet. Have 
taken our tent down and pitched it on the middle of our little 
piece of ice, with our boat alongside. Joe has built another 
hut alongside the tent. 

April 9. The sun has shown himself for a few minutes. 
Mr. Meyer shot him ; latitude b5° 51' N. The sea runs very 
high threatening to Avash us off every minute. We are in 
the hands of God ; may He pj'cserve us. The ice is much 
slacker, and the water is coming nearer. Things look very 
bad. God knows how the night will end. Evening : Washed 
out of our tent; Hannah from her snow-hut. Have gotten 
everything in the boat ready for a start ; she can never live 
in such a sea. The sun has set very good. Land in sight. 
It has cheered us up. The women and children are in the 
boat. We have not a dry place to walk about nor a piece of 
fresh-water ice to eat. The sea has swept over all. The ice 
is closing in fast ; the wind and sea going down. 

April 12. We are still prisoners, the ice close. Saw 
some seals, but could not get them. Very hungry, and likely 
to be so. 

April 14. Our small piece of ice is wearing away very 
fast; our little provisions are nearly finished. Things look 
very dark ; starvation very near. My trust is in God ; He 
will bring us through. All well. 

April 16. The ice still the same ; no swell on. My 
head and face have been swollen to twice their usual size. I 
do not know the cause of it, unless it is the ice head-pillow 
and the snn. We keep an hour's w^atch at night. Some one 
has been at the pemmican on their watch, and I can plit my 
hand on the man. He did the same thing during the winter, 
and on the night of the 7th I caught him in the act. We 
liave but few days' provisions left. The only thing that 
troubles me is the thought of cannibalism. It is a fearful 
thought, but may as well be looked boldly in the face as oth- 
erwise. If such things are to happen we must submit. May 
God save us ! 



JOHN HEREON 'S DIARY. ' 763 

April 17. We shot the dogs last winter for stealing the 
provisions. If I had my way, with the consent of all hands, 
I would call out and shoot down that two-legged dog, who 
has since been at them. I see most of the men have tiieir 
faces swollen, but not so badly as mine. All well, but grow- 
ing very weak. 

April 18. Joe saw a small hole of water half a mile olx» 
He took his gun and ventured over the loose ice. No sooner 
had he gotten there than he sliot a seal, and sang out for the 
kayak, as the water made rapidly. It is a nice-sized seal. 
A joyful sight met our view this morning when we turned out 
— the land in sight, bearing S. W. We returned thanks to 
God for His mercy and goodness to us. We divided the seal 
very nicely into sixteen parts. One man then turned his 
back, and called out the names, each man stepping up and 
taking his share. 

April 20. Blowing a gale somewhere. The swell is very 
heavy. The first warning we had — the man on watch 
sang out at the moment — a sea struck us, and, washing over 
us, carried away everything that was loose. This happened 
at 9 o'clock last night. We shipped sea after sea, five and 
ten minutes after each other, carrying away everything we 
had, our tent, skins, and most of our bed-cloiliing, leaving 
us destitute, with only the few things we could get into the 
boat. There we stood from 9 in the evening until 7 next 
morning, enduring, I should say, what men never stood be- 
fore. The few things we saved, and the children, were 
placed in the boat. The sea broke over us dpring that night 
and morning. Every fifteen or twenty minutes a sea would 
come, lift the boat and us with it, carry us along the ice, and 
lose it strength near the edge, and sometimes on it. Then it 
would take us the next fifteen minutes to get back to a safe 
place, ready for the next roller. So we stood that long hour, 
not a word spoken but the commands to " Hold on, my hear- 
ties, bear down on her, put on all your weight ;" and so we 
did, bearing down and holding en like grim death. Cold, 
hungry, wet, and little prospect ahead. At 7 o'clock there 



764 JOHN herron's diary. 

came close to us a small piece of ice, which rode dry, and 
we determined to launch the boat and reach it, or perish. The 
cook went overboard but was saved. Landed there in safety, 
thank God. All well. Tired and sleepy. 

April 21. Last night and yesterday all hands wet. Noth- 
ing dry to put on to-day. There is little to dry, bnt we have 
stripped off everything we can spare, and are drying 
them. The men are divided into two watches, sleeping in 
the boat and doing the best we can. Hunger disturbs us 
most. 

April 22. Weather very bad. It appears to me we are 
the sport and jest of the elements. The other night they 
played with us and our boat as tliough we were shuttlecocks. 
Men would never believe, nor could pen describe the scenes 
which we have passed through, and yet live. Here we are, 
half drowned, cold and with no means of shelter. Everything 
wet and no sun to dry them. The scene looks bad ; nothing 
to eat. Everything finished if some relief does not come 
along. I do not know what will become of us. Fearful 
thoughts enter my head as to the future. Mr. Meyer is starv- 
ing ; lie cannot last long in this state. Joe has been off on 
the ice three times to-day, the little way he can get, but has 
not seen anything. Chewed on a piece of skin this morning 
that was tanned and saved for clothing ; rather a tough and 
tasteless breakfast. Joe ventured off on the ice the fourth 
time, and after looking a good while from a piece of iceberg, 
saw a bear coming slowly toward us. He ran back as fast as 
possible for liis gun. All of us laid down and remained per- 
fectly still, Joe and Hans going out some distance to meet 
the bear. Getting behind a hummock, they waited for him. 
Along came Bi-uin, thinking lie was coming to a meal instead 
of furnisliing one liiinself. Clack, bang went two rifles, and 
down went Bruin to save a starving lot of men. The Lord 
be praised ; this is His heavenly Avork ! We cannot catch 
seal for the pack-ice, and avc are on a bad sealing-ground. 
He thcjrefore sends a bear along where bears arc seldom seen, 
and where we certainly never expected to find one. The 



JOHN hekron's diaey. 'JG5 

poor bear was hungry himself ; there was nothmg in his 
stomach. Joe, poor fellow, looked very much down on our 
account. Everything looks bright again but the atmos- 
phere ; it looks threatening. 

April 25. Wind increased to a gale last night from the 
N. E. Raining all night and to-day, with snow-squalls. 
Launched the boat at 5 a. m« The case was desperate ; run- 
ning with a light-Jouilt boat, damaged as she is, patched and 
scratched all over. But what were we to do ? The piece of 
ice we were on had wasted away so much it would never ride 
out the gale. Our danger to-day was very great ; a gale of 
wind blowing ; a crippled boat overloaded ; and a fearful sea 
running, filled with small ice as sharp as knives. But, thank 
God, we came safely through it. We are all soaking wet, in 
everything we have, and no chance of drying anything. We 
have had neitlier sun nor moon for over a week. Not a sin- 
gle star have I seen. All is dark and dreary, but, please 
God, it will soon brighten up. We have struck the sealman's 
grounds. I never saw such an abundance of seals before ; 
they are in schools like the porpoise. We hauled up on a floe 
after eight hours' pull ; could make no westing. Shot some 
seals, but they all sunk ; Joe shot them. Hard times. 

April 26. Joe shot a seal last evening and broke the 
charm. Hans shot one this morning. Ice very thick around. 
Started at G.30 a.m., and were beset two hours afterward. 
Pulled up on a small piece of ice ; the best we could find. 
Snowing all day. Repaired the boat here, which it wanted, 
and the weather cleared up in the afternoon. Got some 
things dried a little, and half of us turned in. 

April 28. Gale of wind sprang up from the W. ; heavy 
sea running ; water washing over the floe. All ready and 
standing by our boat all night. Not quite so bad as the other 
night. Snow-squalls all night and during the forenoon- 
Launched the boat at daylight, but could get nowhere for 
the ice. Heavy sea and head-wind ; blowing a gale right in 
our teeth. Hauled up on a piece of ice at 6 a. m., and had 

a few hours' sleep, but were threatened to be mashed to 

U 



766 JOHN hekkon's diaky. 

pieces by some bergs. They are fighting quite a battle in 
the water, and bearing right for us. We called the watch, 
launched the boat, and got away, the wind blowing mode- 
rately and the sea going down. 

4:30 P. M. Steamer right ahead, and a little to the N.of us. 
We hoisted the colors, pulled until dark, trying to cut her 
off, but she does not see us. She is a sealer, bearing S. W. 
Once she appeared to be bearing right down upon us, but I 
suppose she was working through the ice. What joy she 
caused ! We found a small piece of ice and boarded it for 
the night. Night calm and clear. The stars are out the 
first time for a week, and there is a new moon. The sea 
quiet, and splendid northern lights. Divided into two 
watches, four hours' sleep each. Intend to start early. Had 
a good pull this afternoon ; made some westing. Cooked 
with blubber-nre. Kept a good one all night, so that we could 
be seen. 

April 29. Morning fine and calm ; the water quiet. At 
daylight sighted the steamer five miles off. Called tlie watch, 
launched the boat and made for lier. After an hour's pull 
gained on her a good deal ; another hour and we got fast in 
the ice ; could get no further. Landed on a piece of ice, and 
hoisted our colors from an elevated place. Mustered our 
rifles and pistols, and fired togetlier, making a considerable 
report. Fired tlnee rounds and was answered by three shots, 
the steamer at the same time lieading for us. He headed 
N., then S. E,, and kept on so all day. He tried to work 
through tlie ice, but could not. Very strange ; I should 
think any sailing-vessel, mucli less a steamer, could get 
througli witli ease. We fired several rounds and kept our 
colors flying, but he came no nearer. He was not over four 
or five miles distant. Late in the afternoon he steamed 
away, bearing S. W. We gave him up. Li tlie evening he 
hove in sight again, but farther off. While looking at liim, 
another stranger hove in sight, so that we liave two scalers 
near, one on each side of us, and I do not expect to be picked 
up by either of them. 



JOHN Hebron's diary. 767 

April 30. Five a. m. ; weather thick and foggy. Glori- 
ous sight when fog broke ; a steamer close to us. She sees 
us and bears down on us. We are saved, thank God ! We 
are safe on board the Tigress, of St. John's, Captain Bart- 
lett. He says the other steamer could not have seen us, as 
the captain is noted for his humanity. The Tigress musters 
one hundred and twenty men, the kindest and most obliging 
I have ever met. Picked up in latitude 53° 35^ N. 

May 1. Weather very fine. Going north, sealing. The 
steamer we saw on the 29th was the Eagle, of St. John's, 
Captain Jackmann, noted for his humanity in saving life. 
He has received two medals for saving life. The captain of 
this steamer says that if that man had seen us, and could not 
have gotten to us with the steamer, he would have sent his 
men on the ice and carried us off. Joe is in his glory, shoot- 
ing seals. We are getting on first-rate, eating and sleeping. 

May 2. The crew on board this steamer, one hundred 
and twenty in number, are like a band of brothers. They 
are all Newfoundland men, and are very kind to each other. 
No wrangling there ; a new thing on board ship. 

May 3. Blowing fearfully all night, and continues to do 
so. These steamers must be very strong ; they endure great 
punishment. She is in the ice getting knocks that one would 
think would go right through her, but the men seem to think 
nothing of it. We are treated with the greatest kindness by 
them ; they never think they are doing enough for us. 

May 4. Surrounded in the ice. Gale continued last night 
and this morning ; lost its force at noon. Had divine service 
to-day — the first we have had since Captain Hall's death. 
We had some of the bear-meat left when the steamer came 
along ; so the bear saw us out of danger and the Tigress took 
us from it. 

May 5. The steamer beset in the ice. A man from aloft 
saw a large number of seals, some four or five miles off. All 
hands over the side, and made for them. The captain's son 
no sooner arrived there and fired the first shot than the cart- 
ridge burst, and shattered his hand very badly. Some of the 



768 



JOHN HEllRON S DIARY. 



men came back with him, spoihng their work for some time. 
They killed seven or eight hundred seals before sunset. The 
steamer could not come to their assistance, so they left them 
on the ice all night. 

May 6. The crew started for their seals at the Qrst streak 
of day. Nearly all of them were stolen by the other steam- 
ers. 

May 7. Blowing a heavy gale all night, N. W. Seven 
A. M., turned her head S., and are running out the ice ; looks 
like going home. 

May 8. "Will be in St. John's early in the morning, I 
think 4 P. M. We are going to Bay Roberts first, to land the 
boats and sealing-gear. Then they will start for St. John's. 

May 9. Bay Roberts. Went on shore where we were re- 
ceived very kindly by the inhabitants. The American consul 
from Harbor Grace, and other gentlemen, came to see us, 
and were very kind doing all they possibly could. We are 
getting paid for our sufferings on the ice. It is a very splen- 
did bay, with very neat and comfortable houses, 'i'iie peo- 
ple are veiy intelligent and kind. 







.ppiJiiiilBifflflft 




?■ in-'^mifi iiil ^ 



CHAPTER XLYIII. 

POLAEIS SEAECH AND BELIEF EXPEDI- 
TIONS. 

(cruise of the JUNIATA AND TIGRESS.) 

The stoiy told by Capt. Tyson and his companions 
of the ice-drift, excited deep apprehensions as to the 
fate of the balance of the Polaris crew, who^ in case 
of the wreck of their ship, had probably gone down 
with her or were imprisoned on the ice-bound shores 
of Greenland ; and it was resolved by the Secretary 
of the Navy that one or more vessels should be sent 
to search for the missing navigators. 

As the Secretary had no vessel suitable for this ser- 
vice at his command he purchased, as the most avail- 
able one, the Tigress — the same steamer which rescued 
the Polaris party from the ice off the Labrador coast. 
This vessel was built expressly for sealing, and was 
particularly adapted for sailing among ice-iioes. The 
price paid for this ship was $60,000. She arrived at 
New York on the 28th of June, and the work of prepar- 
ing her for the proposed trip was immediately com- 
menced at the Brooklyn Nav3^-3^ard. 

The Secretar}^ also directed that the U. S. steamer 
Juniata, which had been fitted uj) to assist in laying 
a cable from the, Bermuda's to the Atlantic coast, 
should give up that enterprise and ])e sent to the 



Y70 TIIE JtTSriATA. 

Lower Greenland settlements to assist in the search. 
Preparations for her voyage were speedily made ; 
and with a load of coal and ample provisions, from 
which she was to supply the Tigress, and the Polaris 
if found, she started from New York on the 24th of 
June. She was manned by one hundred and thirty 
men and carried two light guns. Besides her own 
boats, she carried a large steam launch intended for 
expeditions further north than the Juniata could 
safely go. The following is a list of the principal 
officers of the expedition : — 

Daniel L. Braine, Commander. 
Edgar C. Merriman, Executive Officer. George W. DeLong, Navigator. 
George E. Ide, Edward J. McClelland, Charles W. Chipp, Lieutenants. 
Wm. F. Bulkley, Samuel E. Comley, Sidney H. May, John D. Keeler, Ensigns. 
Frederick E. Upton, Master. J. J. Hunker, Midshipman. 

T. C. Walton, Surgeon. B. F. Rogers, Assistant Surgeon. 

T. S, Thompson, Passed Assistant Paymaster. 

The Juniata an-ived at St. John's on the 30th of 
June, and after several days of additional preparations 
for her hazardous trip started for the Greenland 
coast, and reached Disco Island on the 2 2d of July. 
Here a number of sledge dogs were procured, coal for 
the Tigress landed, and other preparations for that 
vessel completed. The Juniata then left Disco, July 
29th, and reached Upernavik on the 81st. 

As Upernavik was as far north as the Juniata could 
be expected to go, her magnificent steam launch the 
"Little Juniata," was here put afloat, and thoroughly 
eqiiipped for a voyage up the coast in search of the 
missin^** party. She Avas commanded on this trip by 
Lt. DeLong, and lier crew consisted of eight volun- 
teers and an ice pilot. She steamed northward on 
the 2d of August, amid the enthusiastic cheers ,of the 
Juniata crew and spectators, and reached Tessuisak 
at midnight of the same day. 



CRUISE OF THE LITTLE JUNIATA. 77l 

The next morning the Little Juniata was pushed 
cautiously on, in full view of immense fields of ice and 
between huge floating icebergs. On the night of the 
4th they reached Duck Islands and Wilcox Head, 
where they were enveloped in a dense fog, and en- 
tangled in an ice-pack, through which they escaped 
to the westward after a twelve hours' struggle with 
the floes. 

Entering Melville Bay on the 6th, they sighted 
Cape York on the morning of the 8th, and headed 
towards the land which was capped with a dense fog. 
Two hours later a gale arose which increased to a 
frightful tempest, and the launch was for thirty-six 
hours on the edge of the ice-pack in a dangerous posi- 
tion ; as it was impossible to land and no progress 
could be made to the north, the explorers headed 
south, and arrived off Tessuisak on the 11th, where 
they met the Tigress which had arrived on the scene 
of action. 

The steamer Tigress left the Brooklyn l^avy-yard 
for her humane undertaking on the 14th of July, 
at 5 P. M., amid repeated cheers from the seamen of 
the "Brooklyn," "Vermont," and other ships. She 
steamed slowly up the East River toward Long Island 
Sound, and as she passed the Government battery it 
fired one farewell shot as a parting salute. Her ofii- 
cers were as follows : — 

James A. Greer, Commander. Henry C. White, Executive Officer, 

R, M. Berry, Uriel Sebree, George F. Wilkins, Lieutenants. 
George E. Baughman, Paymaster. J, W. Elston, Surgeon. 

George E. Tyson, W. N. Chipman, Ice-masters. 

The Esquimaux, Hans and his family were sent 
home in the Tigress ; and Joe accompanied the expe- 
dition as interpreter. His wife Hannah, with " Pun- 
na," remained at Wiscasset, Maine, where she had 



772 ABOUT " HANNAH." 

been keeping house for the whole Esquimaux party, 
who had been sent thither by the Government after 
the investigation at Washington. The following is a 
copy of a letter written by her to Mrs. Buddington, at 
Groton, as 23ublished in the Springfield Republican. 
The " old man " refers to Capt. Buddington ; his sub- 
sequent safe arrival home shows that Hannah is some- 
thing of a j)rophetess. The " eight children " means 
the pai*ty under her care. 

"WiscASSET, June 22d, 1873. 

" Sarah Mother Buddington : — I shall never forget 
you. I now try to write you. I am well ; Joe well ; 
Punna very sick for 34 days, little better now. I 
like to see you once more. So good to me. I never 
have time to do anything. Hans's four children here 
too. I got eight children ; no go with them home. 
October 15, 1872, we come home down on ice. Old 
man come by-and-by ; he well. Hannah Lito." 

The same paper states that Mrs. Buddington visited 
Hannah at Wiscasset after the sailing of the Tigress, 
and on suggesting to her that she should return to 
Groton, Hannah with exceptionable Esquimaux thrift 
replied : — 

" What, and leave all these victuals for other people 
to eat up ! No ; Punna and I shall stay till it is all 
eaten." 

The Tigress reached Disco, via St. John's, on the 
4th of August, and joined the Juniata at Disco on 
the 10th. Starting north the next day, the Tigress 
met Lt. De Long returning from his excursion, who 
boarded the steamer and reported to her commander 
the route and incidents of liis trip. The Tigress then 
steamed on across Melville Bay, and approached 
Northumberland Island near which the Polaris was 



"^ THE TIGBESS O?^ THE TEAIL. ^iTS 

reported to have been last seen. This island was 
closely scrutinized, but no traces of the Polaris could 
be found, nor could Tyson and the Esquimaux recog- 
nize it as the locality in which they parted from that 
ship. 

Commander Greer then proceeded northward, and 
when near Cape Ohlsen — so named from one of Dr. 
Kane's crew who was buried near by — Capt. Tyson 
recognized a rock as the one which hid the Polaris 
from the view of the party left on the floe. Soon 
afterward, at nine o'clock on the evening of the 14th, 
a sound of human voices was heard in the distance. A 
boat was instantly lowered and started for the shore 
amid great excitement, which was mingled with exult- 
ation when Greer exclaimed : — 

" I see their house ; two tents are clearly perceptible, 
and moving figures can be seen on the mainland." 

The boat returned in an hour, with the disappoint- 
ing tidings that Captain Buddington and his party 
were not on the coast. Commander Greer now went 
ashore accompanied by Joe as interpreter, and others. 

A crowd of Esquimaux consisting of five men, two 
women and two children, greeted them on their arrival 
at the shore, and seemed quite intelligent. They 
said that they came from Pond's Bay on a hunting 
expedition, and had remained with the Buddington 
party all winter ; the latter had built two boats, and 
started south at the time when the ducks bes^an to 
hatch. 

A comfortable wooden house was found, having in 
it bunks, mattresses, furniture, galley, etc. Provisions, 
instruments, books and other articles were scattered 
about in every direction. Articles of value, includ- 
ing fire-arms and the ship's bell, with manuscript mat 



774 buddington's camp discovered. 

ter and a mutilated log-book were taken aboard the 
Tigress. Nothing respecting the departure or desti- 
nation of the crew could be found. A cairn evidently 
built by them was examined, but contained only seal- 
blubber. 

The Esquimaux stated that Buddington had given 
them his ship, but that when the ice broke up in the 
middle of July, it floated into a cove and sunk. They 
pointed out the place where it lay in nine fathoms 
of water with a grounded iceberg above it. These 
natives had no boats and but little food, and occu- 
pied two tents evidently from the Polaris. They 
intimated that they would like to take a trip in the 
Tigress. 

This deserted camp of the Polaris crew was on the 
mainland opposite Littleton Island, at the place desig- 
nated by Dr. Kane as " Life Boat Cove." The place 
is about sixty miles north of Northumberland Island ; 
the ice-floe party had been mistaken as to the locality 
of their separation with the shij). 

At a quarter past two in the morning, after a halt 
of only five hours, the Tigress started on its return 
south, and arrived at Godhavn on the 25th, where 
the Juniata awaited her arrival. After taking in 
coal and supplies, Commander Greer started for Da- 
vis's Strait and the Labrador Coast. The Juniata 
steamed for St. John's, and reached there on the 
morning of Sept. 10th. Here Commander Braine 
reported by telegraph to the Secretary of the Navy, 
who immediately directed a continuance of the search 
by both vessels. 

In obedience to these orders the Juniata left St. 
John's on the morning of the 18th, the intention be- 
ing to proceed up the Labrador Coast and then to 



SIGNALING THE JUNIATA AT NIGHT. ^75 

visit other places as miglit seem expedient. As night 
came on the prospects of the voyage were gloomy and 
discouraging. Ice was forming, the weather was bad, 
the sea heavy, and the whereabouts of the Tigress 
unknown. 

The night was very dark, and at eleven o'clock a 
light was reported on the port beam. Rockets too 
were observed from a far-off steamer. Commander 
Braine ordered the Juniata to be slowed down, and 
answered the signals. There was the greatest excite- 
ment on board. A steamer in this sea at this time 
was a rare thing, and it was felt that news from the 
Polaris was at hand. The steamer, supposed to be 
the Tigress, approached, and at midnight was close 
aboard ; soon a shout came over the water : — 

" Ship ahoy !" 

" Ay, ay," was answered from the Juniata. 

"Is that the Juniata?" 

"Yes." 

" We have the American Consul aboard." 

A boat was immediately lowered from the Juniata, 
which conveyed Consul Molloy of St. John's to that 
steamer. He informed her commander that he had 
received a telegram that the Polaris crew had arrived 
at Dundee, Scotland, in a whaling vessel ; and that, on 
receipt of the dispatch, he had chartered a steamer to 
follow the Juniata and attempt to overtake her. 
The news was received with great delight, and both 
vessels returned to St. John's ; at which port the 
Tigress also arrived on the 16th of October, after an 
uneventful cruise in the track of the Northern wha- 
lers. 



CHAPTEE XLIX. 
THE WRECK OF THE POLARIS. 

Having given an account of the organization, out- 
ward voyage, and discoveries of the Polaris Expedi- 
tion, the death of its commander, the wintering at 
Thank God Harbor, the disastrous division of its 
members, the perilous drift on the iloes of a portion 
of them, and the search made for the missing steamer, 
it remains to follow the fortunes of the Polaris from 
the 15th of October, 1872, when, with fourteen men 
on board of Tier, she parted her hawsers and was 
swept away amid the storm and darkness ; and the 
story of the experiences of Capt. Buddington and 
his party, may perhaps be best told in his own 
words : — 

" At five p. M. on the 1 2th of August, we started 
from Polaris Bay for the United States. We drifted 
through the ice till the 29th, when we were locked 
fast in the ice-pack and drifted with it. We were 
still leaking fast, but tlie donkey engine enabled us 
to keep the water under. I rigged out a house on 
the floe, calculated to hold all our hands — thirty-three 
in number. It was twenty-seven by twenty-four feet 
and was covered with canvas. On the 9th of Octo- 
ber I had bags of bread placed in it. We were still 
drifting south, our position being 78^ 45^ North, 72^ 
15^ West. 

776 



CAPTAITsT BUDDINGTOn's NATIEATIVE. 777 

" On the lotli, tlie wind blew witli a velocity of 
forty miles, accompanied by a violent snow-storm. 1 
had another hawser passed out to the old massive 
floe which had brought us down from lat. SO'^, and 
which was our only safety. At 7.30 we had a severe 
nip, from a heavy old floe which passed heavily on 
our starboard side, raisino; the vessel a few feet and 
keeling her over to port. It was then reported to 
me that we were making water fast and were stove 
aft. Our engines could no longer cope with the 
water. 

" The two native Esquimaux had their wives, chil- 
dren and efi'ects on the floe, it seeming to them, as 
it did indeed to all of us, the safest place. Our 
remaining two whale boats — all we had — were low- 
ered on the ice and hauled back to a secure place 
alongside of the stores. Suflicient provisions and 
fuel to last all winter were put on the ice, together 
with musk-ox skins, bedding, and all the clothing 
except what we wore. At half-past nine the floe 
suddenly broke ; that part to which the vessel Avas 
made fast breaking away from the main body. The 
bow hawser snapped like pack-thread, the anchors 
slipped, and the violence of the wind sent the vessel 
adrift as rapidly as if she had been under steam. At 
a moment's notice we were thus separated from more 
than half the ship's company. 

^^ We were now in a ciitical condition, without boats, 
anchors, or hawsers ; but there was no time for 
reflection, as the water was gaining fast, and would 
soon reach the furnace fires in spite of the bilge pump 
which was all this time at work, assisted by the 
alley-way pump ; and if we could not start the deck 
pumps it was evident that the vessel would go down. 



778 THE POLAKIS WRECKED AND DESERTED. 

The ice around us was fine broken " brash," which 
would not bear the weight of a man. By this time 
the water in the boiler was hot, and, by pouring 
several bucketfuls down the pumps, we thawed them 
sufiiciently so as to enable us to keep the water from 
gaining ; and never did men use their strength with 
more energy than we did on that occasion. It was 
evident we could not last long at the work, but fortu- 
nately, just then, the engineers reported steam up, by 
which additional aid we were enabled to keep the 
ship afloat. 

^' On the morning of the 16th we found our position 
a few miles north of Littleton Island, in Smith's 
Straits. The gale had then subsided, and it was 
shortly afterwards quite calm. We looked from the 
masthead of our vessel for our companions on the floe, 
but could not see anything of them whatever. The 
current must have taken them in a different direction 
from the course the wind took us. About noon a 
breeze vsprung up from the north, and, opening a lead 
in-shore to the east, the vessel at this time began 
drifting out of the straits again. By the aid of steam 
and sail I took advantage of the lead when opened 
wide enough to admit me, and ran the vessel as near 
shore as the ice would allow, and made fast with lines 
to heavy grounded hummocks. Here we were 
agi'ound at low water, there being nine feet rise of 
tide at this 2:)lace, which happened to be Kane's Life- 
boat Cove, lat. 78^ 2Sy N., long. 73^ 21^ W. We 
kept an anxious lookout all the time from the mast- 
head of our vessel for signs of the party; but the 
sharpest eyes on shipboard failed to see aught of them. 
As, however, they had the boats, even to the little 
scow, we were in hopes they would possibly be able 
yet to make for us. 



PREPAEING FOR WIISTTER. 779 

"On tlie 17tli I surveyed the ship, and found the 
stem entirely broken off below the six-foot mark. I 
called the officer's attention to it, who only wondered 
she had kept afloat so long. I therefore considered 
the Polaris a lost vessel, and immediately made prep- 
arations for leaving her and living on shore during 
the winter, getting our spare sails, coals and provis- 
ions on shore. We were assisted in this by the Etah 
Esquimaux, who came to us the day after we got 
ashore. When these Esquimaux hove in sight, 
gesticulating and hollooing with great apparent glee, 
we took them to be our castaways, and immediately 
cheered most heartily in return. We put up a house 
on shore, which was superintended by Mr. Chester, 
those not engaged in building it being occupied get- 
ting provisions and fuel, which they did with a great 
deal of difficulty, as they had to leap from one detached 
piece of ice to another all the way to the shore. Often 
some of the party would tumble through fissures and 
get wet, which was a great inconvenience, considering 
the insufficient supply our wardrobe furnished for 
change. 

" On the morning of the 21st we had a number of 
Esquimaux visitors. They came in ^ye sledges, and 
kindly went to work to assist us, proving of excellent 
service. In a short time we had all the portable 
articles from the ship on shore. I made them such 
presents as our scanty stock would permit, and they 
expressed themselves well pleased. It was fortunate 
that, among other articles put on the floe, were a 
number of those indispensable articles to an Esqui- 
maux — a quantity of knives. On the 24th they left 
us for Etah, we having completed our work for 
abandoning the vessel. At six P. M. we stopped the 



780 VISIT FROM THE NATIVES. 

steam pumps to let her fill, and bid farewell to tlie 
little Polaris which had penetrated through dangers 
and hard knocks to a high latitude, but Avhich was 
destined not to return with the honors she had gained. 
During the remainder of the month we were visited 
by natives — men, women, and children. 

^^ I sent a party to McGary's Kock in search of Dr. 
Hayes' boat and provisions, but could discover no 
sign of her. I was afterwards informed by the 
natives, that a party from the West Land found her 
five years ago and appropriated to their own use what 
was serviceable to them ; the boat they discovered to 
be worthless and full of holes. At high water the 
lower decks of the Polaris were covered, the water 
rising to within three feet of the upper deck, the ves- 
sel being firm on the rocks. I was in hopes she 
would remain in that position, as we had to get fuel 
from her, and material for making our boats for our 
summer journey south. 

^' We spent the winter months of November, Decem- 
ber and January in household duties — getting ice for 
melting purposes, supplying galley and house stoves 
with coal, and keeping passage ways to and from the 
house free from snow. • A great many foxes were shot. 
We were visited continually by the natives, who 
were suffering a great deal from cold and hunger. 
Several of the families made their residence with us 
for the most of the winter, building snow-huts for 
themselves, where they slept. We supplied them 
witli a share of the provisions we had, but still they 
had to kill a great many of their dogs in order to 
give their children fresh meat. Two families in par- 
ticular reduced their team of dogs to one, and another 
family to two. 



THE WINTER AT LIFE-BOAT COVE. 781 

" Some of our people had slight attacks of scurvy, 
principally in the gums, but in general the health of 
our party remained good. The month of February 
brought us daylight. On the 15th, the sun was seen 
for the first time since its disappearance on the 16th 
of November. We had now to consume the bowsprit, 
masts and rigging for fuel, these fortunately having 
been landed. The only material for building boats 
was the ceiling of the alley- ways and after-cabin — the 
house on deck being used as fuel The following 
months were occupied in building boats for our jour- 
ney. 

" Shooting parties went out occasionally, but, with 
the exception of a few hares, generally returned 
unsuccessful. There was one deer killed during the 
season, but a great many were seen. Although the 
natives had left us some time for their respective set- 
tlements and hunting grounds, they still, however, 
continued to visit us ; and, as if to remind us of our 
former kindness to them, which they appeared to 
have appreciated, kept bringing to us quantities of 
walrus liver, which made a great improvement in the 
health of our party. 

" I had suitable bags made out of the foresail, and 
filled them with provisions for our journey. I also 
built a small boat out of some square lumber for the 
Etah natives, which will be a great acquisition to 
them in sealing and getting eggs from the islands. 
By the 28th of May all our preparations were made. 
I must compliment Mr. Chester, who superintended 
the building of these boats. They are creditable 
scows — far better structures than I thought could 
have been made out of the material we had. They 
are flat-bottomed, and carry considerable weight. The 
45 



782 THE STAKT HOMEWAED. 

open water was by tliis time close up to our house. 
Our provisions and what limited clothing we were to 
take with us, were brought down to the water's edge 
to be in readiness for embarkation. There still 
remained with us two native families, and during the 
winter and spring we were visited by nearly all the 
natives from Etah to Cape York. There were during 
this time three deaths and one birth among the 
natives. One of the former was Myouk, (mentioned 
by Dr. Kane,) who was one of the first to visit us 
after our vessel got on shore. 

"I had intended starting on the 1st of June, but 
that day being Sunday I postponed our departure 
until the following day. It was then blowing a gale 
of wind and we could not start with safety. In the 
meantime we deposited several boxes containing 
books, scientific instruments, three-box chronometers 
and the pendulum, on the north side of Lifeboat Cove, 
and covered them with rocks. At 1 a. m., on June 
3d, I called all hands, got a hasty breakfast, and left 
our house for the last time, dividing our party into 
two equal parts. We then launched our boats, two 
in number, placed our provisions and clothing in 
them, and left Polaris Point and the scenes of our 
long winter stay, for Melville Bay and Upernavik. 

" Having made a halt at the settlement of Etah^ 
which we found deserted, we reached Hakluyt 
Island late on the evening of the 4th, meeting with 
but little obstruction from ice. A gale of wind and 
pack ice prevented us leaving until the 8th. We 
then landed on Northumberland Island. Tlie ice 
impeded our further progress. At eight p. m. on the 
10th, having previously made three unsuccessful 
attempts to get forward, we entered a lead that 



THE JOURNEY SOUTHWARD. 783 

extended across the whole sound toward Cape Parry, 
our intended route. We were met by a heavy body 
of pack ice which completely closed us in, and were 
compelled hastily to haul our loaded boats on the ice 
to keep them from being crushed. 

" We drifted with the pack all that night, and the 
morning of the 1 1th found us abreast of our former 
encampment. We were then about four miles from 
the shore. There was a small lead of water along 
the land. We had to go to it or go adrift in the pack. 
We commenced at once to transport our provisions 
and boats over the pieces of floe. After a great deal 
of exertion and labor, we finally succeeded in getting 
a landing, at 2.30, on the morning of the 11th, in the 
same place we left the evening before. On the 1 2th 
there was a good opening in the ice. We started at 
10.30, and with a good breeze we reached the main- 
land. We pulled round Cape Parry, and halted on 
Blackwood Point south of Cape Parry and near Fitz- 
clarence Rock. On the evening of the next day we 
landed at Dalrymple Island. From this point we 
met with various obstructions from ice and bad 
weather. We finally succeeded in getting past Wol- 
stenholm Sound and Cape York. We afterwards 
entered Melville Bay, meeting with various obstruc- 
tions from ice, and in some places we had to haul 
our boats and effects over from the one lead to the 
other. 

^' We were thus proceeding on our journey south 
until the morning of June 23d, when we saw a steam- 
ship beset about ten miles south. We were then 
about twenty-five miles south-east of Cape York, and 
hauled up on the ice. The passage was completely 
blocked with ice. A few hours previous to this my 



784 EESCUED BY THE EATEXSCKAIG. 

boat got stove, having been caught between the floe 
and land ice ; but we had it repaired with canvas and 
tacks brought for the purpose. At this time our fuel 
w^as very scarce, not having more than would last a 
week. For some time we had but one hot meal in 
twenty-four hours, reserving our fuel for melting 
snow for drinking water, as we were unable to pro- 
cure any off the floe. 

" I sent two of our party to the vessel to let them 
know of our situation. Before reaching the vessel, 
however, they were met by a party of eighteen men 
from the ship — these latter having recognized a party 
on the floe — who had come to render what assistance 
was in their power to what they supposed was the 
crew of a shipwrecked whalesliip. With the excep- 
tion of two of the party, who went back to their 
vessel w^th an account of us, the rest came back to 
the boats with the men whom I had sent. I made 
immediate preparations to get on board the steamer, 
the men from this vessel kindly assisting us with our 
personal effects. We started at seven p. m., leaving 
our boats, provisions, etc., behind, and arrived at 
twelve meridian on board the whaling ship Raven- 
scraig, Kirkcaldy, Scotland, William Allen, master, 
bound for the West Coast on a whaling voyage. 

" I cannot express myself in terms sufllciently ade- 
quate of the kind reception we got from Captain 
Allen, who immediately opened his own wardrobe 
for our benefit. The surgeon of the ship, Mr. A. D. 
Soutter, was most assiduous in his eftbrts to promote 
our comfort — indeed, all the ofiicers and crew vied 
with each other in their efforts to make us comfort- 
able. 

'^ We had at the time we were rescued only just 



J]!^CIDENTS OF THE EESCUE. 785 

commenced the difficult part of our journey, and had 
yet to make some three hundred miles of hard travel 
before we could get to a place of comparative safety. 
Captain Allen expressed his gratification in falling in 
with us, as he and his officers expressed their 
undoubted conviction that it would have been utterly 
impossible for us to reach the settlements in our boats, 
especially if we had in store for us anything like the 
ice which the Eavenscraig encountered the previous 
three weeks. It was very evident that our boats 
would not have stood hauling over the ice, and to 
have abandoned them and attempted to make the 
journey on foot was simply not to be entertained a sin- 
gle moment. It was, therefore, lucky that the Kaven- 
scraig fell in with us. As I may say with safety, it 
was the saving of our lives. We were surprised and 
greatly rejoiced to hear of the safety of our fellow- 
explorers who had got adrift from us." 

Captain Allen, whose ship was fast in the ice at 
the time, describes- the incidents of the rescue as 
follows : — 

^^ At one o'clock a. m., on the morning of the 23d 
of June, the lookout from the crow's nest reported 
that a party, supposed to be Esquimaux, were making 
their way over the pack ice towards the vessel. At 
this time they were a long way distant, probably 
thirteen or fourteen miles, and appeared to move ver}^ 
slowly. By nine a. m. the strangers had advanced a 
mile or two nearer, and came to a halt. We could then 
just make out that they were not Esquimaux, and 
could distinguish two boats, each of which displayed 
a small flag on a pole. Owing to the distance and 
refraction it was almost impossible to make this out 
with certainty. Concluding they had seen us, our 



786 HOSPITALITY OF A SCOTCH WHALER. 

ensign was at once hoisted as a reply signal, and we 
sent off eighteen picked men to render any assistance 
required, while the strangers were observed to detach 
two of their number in the direction of the vessel. 
When these met our party, the whole preceded on- 
ward to the boats, and a messenger was sent back to 
inform us of the news. 

" At six p. M. the entire party started for the ves- 
sel, and some idea of the difficulty of traveling over 
such ice may be formed from the fact that it was 
twelve, midnight, before they got on board, taking 
nearly seven hours to perform twelve miles distance. 
This arose from the soft and slushy state of the deep 
snow covering the ice, while myriads of huge hum- 
mocks were piled everywhere over the surface, which 
was also split up and full of treacherous holes, into 
which many a flounder took place. The party on 
reaching the ship was made heartily welcome, and 
as comfortable as the means at our command could 
supply. They appeared tired and weatherbeaten, but 
in good spirits and thankful at having fallen in with 
a ^ Scotch whaler,' for which vessels they were on the 
lookout, knowing as the commander did, that the 
whalers about this time passed through Melville Bay." 

After reaching the North Water, Captain Budding- 
ton and ten of his companions were transferred to 
the whaling steamer Arctic, and arrived at Dundee 
on the 18th of September. Proceeding to Liverpool, 
they were tendered a free passage homo by several 
steamship lines, and took passage in the City of Ant- 
w^erp, which reached New York on the 4th of October. 
The other three men were taken to Dundee in the 
Intrepid, and arrived home a little later. 



ii;vniir'!ri,vi;n!nFi;ffii!fi!ii!ftii'M«iii i, 




CHAPTER L. 
GERMAN ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. 

Dr. Augustus Peteemai^n, having unsuccessfully 
incited his German countrymen to join the noble 
band of Arctic explorers, at his own risk fitted out a 
tiny vessel called the " Germania," which sailed from 
Bergen, May 24th, 1868, under the command of Karl 
Koldewey, a native of Hoya, in Hanover. The whole 
crew numbered only eleven men. Being unable to 
approach the east coast of Greenland, Capt. Koldewey 
made for the Spitzbergen seas, and attained a latitude 
of 81*^ 5'. He then sailed down Hinlopen Strait 
in August, sighting the "Swedish Foreland," and 
returned to Bergen September 30th, 1868. 

This first German expedition was not a success — 
neither was it a failure ; and Dr. Petermann and his 
friends were not discouras^ed. It awakened an inter- 
est in Polar exploration which resulted in a second 
expedition of two vessels — a screw steamer re-named 
the Germania and manned by a crew of seventeen, 
and the brig Hansa, with a crew of fourteen, under 
the command of Capt. Hegemann. The whole expe- 
dition was put under the command of Koldewey, 
who took as his flag-ship the " Germania ; " and, in 
addition, there were attached to both ships several 
eminent men of science, provided with every requisite 

787 



788 DESTRUCTION OF THE HANS A. 

necessary for the successful performance of their 
duties. King William came down and bade them 
good-bye ; a distinguished party gave them a farewell 
dinner, and out of the good harbor of Bremen they 
sailed Tnore Teidonico to the strains of a brass band, 
on the 15th of June, 1869. 

In latitude 70^ 46 ^ longitude 10^ 51^, the " Hansa," 
which had on board some of the supplies of fuel for 
herself and consort, got separated from the " Germa- 
nia," and was caught in the ice ; and on the 2 2d of 
October the ice-floes, pressing on every side, crushed 
her. Then, homeless in the midst of this dreary ice- 
field, with the winter coming on, the crew built on the 
floe, with the patent fuel, a house in which they took 
refuge. In this strangest of all abodes they passed 
Christmas — not uncheerfully on the whole. In two 
months the current had carried them south four hun- 
dred miles, and though they were only thirty miles 
from land, it was impossible to reach it. On the 27th 
of November, their track-map shows that they were 
just about half-way between Greenland and Iceland. 
Shortly after their Christmas festivities, the floe split 
and ruined their house. For some time it would 
seem as if their lives hung on a thread. But they 
were destined for better things. The floe righted 
again, and they left their boats, to which they had 
been forced to flee, and again built their fuel house. 
On the 3d of January 1870, they were close to the 
Greenland coast, but could only survey it in sadness, 
as the broken ice precluded the possibility of ever 
reaching it. 

As spring advanced their situation was more cheer- 
ing in one sense, but more depressing in another. 
Their ice island had now, by the lashing of the surge 



CRUISE OF THE GERMANIA. 789 

and the melting of the ice, got reduced until it was 
not more than a hundred yards in breadth. By May 
their sextants told them that they had drifted eleven 
hundred miles on their cheerless raft. Finally, on 
the 14th of June, they arrived in safety in their three 
boats at the Greenland Moravian Mission station of 
Friedriksthal, in latitude 60^, just on the other side 
of Cape Farewell. Here they met their countrymen 
of the Herrnhuttian Unitas Fratrum^ and once more 
were safe, after perils very similar to those experi- 
enced by the Polaris ice-floe party. Notwithstanding 
all their hardships none of the crew died, though 
one of them became temporarily insane. 

Fairer fortune attended the steam-aided " Germania." 
She succeeded in sailing up the East Greenland coast 
to as high as 75*^ 30', but in August was forced to 
turn again to the southward, and winter among the 
Pendulum Islands, in latitude 74^ 39'. From this 
central point many excursions were made, and though 
at times the thermometer sank as low as 40^ below 
zero (of Fahrenheit), yet musk oxen — strange enough 
— being abundant, they passed a not unpleasant 
winter — as winters in 74"^ of north latitude go. 
Christmas was absolutely warm {only 25^^ below zero), 
and with open doors they danced and feasted as it had 
been their custom to do in festive, Christmas-loving 
Germany. " By starlight," says Captain Koldewey, 
" we danced upon the ice ; of the evergreen Andromeda 
(^Cassiope tetragooid) we made a Christmas tree; the 
cabin was decorated with flags, and the presents 
which loving hands had prepared were laid out upon 
the tables; every one received his share, and uni- 
versal mirth prevailed." 

After this holiday time, the explorers began to 



790 IMPORTANT DISCOVEEIES. 

thiDk of business. The sledge equipments were got 
ready, and after one false start, a party of seven set 
out, March 24th, under the command of Captain Kolde- 
wey and Lieutenant Payer — one of the scientific corps 
of the expedition. Dragging the provision-laden 
sledge behind them, they set their faces to the north, 
and after reaching a distance of one hundred and fifty 
miles from the ship, want of provisions compelled 
them to return. On the 27th of April, laden with 
zoological, geological, and botanical collections, but 
decidedly sceptical regarding the " open Polar sea," 
they regained the deck of the " Germania." A grim 
cape — which has been appropriately named after 
Prince Bismarck— marks the northern limit of their 
discoveries. 

As soon as navigation was again opened they com- 
menced their exj)lorations, and were fortunate enough 
to discover (in about latitude 73^ 15') a branching 
fiord, stretching for a long distance. This they 
explored between longitudes 22^ and 28^, without 
reaching its termination, the leaking boiler of the 
engine compelling them to return. This fiord was 
named Franz Josef, in honor of Payer's sovereign. 
Along its shores are peaks (Petermann's and Payer's), 
respectively fourteen thousand and seven thousand 
feet high. On the 11th of September 1870, the 
German ia returned to Bremen. Though the expedi- 
tion failed in some of its objects it did admirable 
w^ork for geography and science, which redounds to 
the credit of the German people who supported and 
the eminent men who planned and carried it out. 

The Austro-Hungarian Arctic Expedition was 
undertaken in 1872, and the idea was received with 
enthusiasm by the whole Austrian empire. The 




'count wilczec in nova zembla. 



LIEUT, payee's expeditioi^. 791 

command was entrusted to Lieut. Payer, an accom- 
plislied and resolute officer, who had already acquired 
considerable Arctic exjDerience in the German expedi- 
tion under Captain Koldewey. He had also in 1871 
explored the seas between Spitzbergen and Nova 
Zembla in a little schooner called the Isbjorn. Lieut. 
Weyprecht, the second in command, was the comrade 
of Lieut. Payer in both his previous Arctic voyages. 
The steamer " Tegethoff " was fitted out in the Elbe, 
with every modern appliance. Captain Carlsen, the 
finder of the Barentz relics, joined the expedition as 
pilot. Dr. Kepes, the surgeon, is a Hungarian. Most 
of the crew are Italians from the Adriatic coast ; but 
there is great confusion of tongues on board the 
" Tegethoff "—Italian, German, English, Norwegian, 
and Slavonic, are all spoken. Captain Carlsen gives 
his orders in Norwegian, with forcible Italian expres- 
sions occasionally thrown in. Dr. Kepes talks to the 
crew in Latin and Hungarian, and two men speak a 
very curious dialect, the German of the Tyrol, which 
Lieut. Payer alone understands. 

Count Wilczek, in the yacht "Isbjorn," accompanied 
by Baron Stern eck, a geologist, a photographer, and 
the count's huntsman, went as far as the Nova Zem- 
bla coast. Lieut. Payer's intention was to round the 
north-eastern point of Nova Zembla, and press east- 
ward to the most northern point of Siberia, where he 
would winter. In the following year he hoped to 
continue the voyage to Bering's Strait — thus complet- 
ing a most important and interesting achievement, 
while during the spring his sledge traveling parties, 
equipped on McClintock's system, would make 
exploring along the unknown coasts of "Wrangell 
Land. 



792 THE "tegethoff" and "isbjoen." 

The "Tegethoff" left the Elbe in June 1872, and 
all preparations having been completed, she steamed 
out of Tromso Harbor on the 13th of July. The first 
ice was encountered on the 25th, in latitude 74^ 15^, 
and on the 29th the coast of Nova Zembla was 
sighted. Here the vessel was beset, but steam was 
got up, and, by repeated charges, she was extricated, 
and reached a lane of open water, about twenty 
miles wide, to the north of the Matochkin Strait. On 
the 12th of August the " Isbjorn " arrived with Count 
Wilczek and his companions on board, and on the 
13th the two vessels anchored about two cables' 
lengths from the shore, in latitude 76^ 30'. The 
18th was a gala day, being the Emperor's birthday. 
Excursions to the adjoining islands were made daily 
by several sledge-parties who returned with quantities 
of fire-wood, geological and botanical specimens, and 
spoils of the chase. 

On the 23d, the north wind set in with great force, 
and the young ice began to form. The vessels then 
parted company. The ^^Tegethoff" steamed away 
northwards on her gallant voyage of discovery, and 
the ^'Isbjorn" started for home. 

The "Tegethoff" was last seen August 23d, 1872, 
pushing her way, round the northern coast of ISTova 
Zembla ; and all who love gallantry and adventure, all 
geographers and seamen of every civilized country, 
must earnestly hope that the next news of the brave 
Austro-Hungarians will be good news, and that they 
will succeed in their useful but difficult undertaking. 
Up to November, 1873, nothing additional had been 
heard of from the expedition. 




RELICS OF THE DUTCH KXPEDITION. 







BARENTZ'S HOi;SE AT ICE -HAVEN. 



CHAPTER LI. 
SWEDISH AND NORWEGIAN EXPEDITIONS. 

The story of the Dutch expedition which wintered 
at Nova Zembla in 1596 has been related in Chapter 
IV. This voyage of Barentz, though the first, 
remained the only one which had rounded that north- 
east point of Nova Zembla ; and the house of Barentz 
was unvisited for two hundred and seventy-eight 
years. But the spell was broken in 1871. Elling 
Carlsen, a Norwegian captain, who had been engaged 
in the North Sea trade for eighteen years, sailed from 
Hammerfest on the 16th of May, in a sloop of sixty 
tons, called the " Solid." He reached the Ice Haven 
of Barentz September 7th, and on the 9th saw a house 
standing at the head of the bay. The materials had 
evidently belonged to a ship, and among them were 
several oak beams. Round the house were standing 
several large puncheons, and there were also heaps of: 
reindeer, seal, bear, and walrus bones. The interior is 
described by Captain Carlsen exactly as represented 
in the curious old drawing by G err it de Veer, the 
historian of the Dutch Expedition. 

The house in which Barentz and his gallant crew 
had wintered, can never have been entered by human 
foot during nearly three centuries that have since 
elapsed. The row of standing bed-places along one 

793 



794 ICE HAVEN RE-VISITED. 

side of the room, the halberd, and the muskets, were 
still in their old places. There stood the cooking- 
pans over the fire-place, the old clock against the wall, 
the arms and tools, the drinking vessels, the instru- 
ments, and the books that had beguiled the weary 
hours of that long night, two hundred and seventy- 
eight years ago. The " History of China " points to 
the goal which Barentz sought, while the ^'Manual 
of Navigation " indicates the knowledge which guided 
his efforts. Stranger evidence never told a more 
deeply interesting story. 

On the 4th of November, 1871, Captain Carlsen 
completed his adventurous voyage by anchoring once 
more at Hammerfest. The Dutch Government have 
secured the numerous relics which he brought away, 
for preservation in the native land of the great navi- 
gator, whose countrymen feel an affectionate pride in 
the glorious deeds of their " Sea fathers," and will 
cherish these memorials of a very noble achievement 
with careful reverence. Many of them, like the old 
clock-dial, are very valuable in an antiquarian point 
of view ; but not the least interesting are the flute, 
which will still give out a few notes, and the small 
shoes of the poor little ship's boy who died during 
the winter. 

For several years past, Sweden and Norway have, 
with a skill and resolution which do the highest 
honor to the gallant Scandinavian nation, prosecuted 
scientific investigations within the Arctic Circle. 
The most important of their expeditions, equipped 
under the superintendence of Professor Nordenskiold, 
sailed from Troraso, July 21st, 1872. It was com- 
posed of the steamer " Polhelm," the brig " Gladan," 
and the steamer *^ Onkel Adam." The "Polhelm" 



NOEDENSKIOLD's SWEDISH EXPEDITION. 795 

was cornmanded by Lieut. Palander, of tlie Swedish 
Koyal Navy, and manned "by officers and men of tlie 
same service. The other two vessels accompanied 
her as transports and were to have returned to Swe- 
den before the winter set in. 

The expedition was supplied with a dwelling-house, 
for winter-quarters, of six rooms, including kitchen, 
larder, bathing-room, and potato cellar, and three large 
sheds attached to the house, adapted for observatories. 
For the sledge parties were provided pemmican, concen- 
trated rum, cooking apparatus, warm sleeping bags, 
sail-cloth tents, and photogene oil for fuel. Three 
light ice-boats, and two larger boats, formed the boat 
equipment, and all were provided with ash-wood 
sledges. Fifty reindeer were also shipped, most of 
them from Kola, in Lapland, with experienced Lapland- 
ers, to drive and attend them. 

The three vessels reached Mussel Bay, Spitzber- 
gen, in lat. 79*^ 50' north, on the 3d of September 
1872 ; three days later they were inextricably shut in 
by the ice, and the number of men to be fed through 
the winter was thus suddenly increased from twenty- 
one to sixty-seven. Some of the reindeer, too, managed 
to escape through the carelessness of the Laplanders. 
In spite of these discouragements, however, prepara- 
tions for wintering progressed briskly, and the porta- 
ble house was being rapidly erected and furnished. 

On the 1st of October, the startling news arrived 
that, at a neighboring promontory called Grey Point, 
six Norwegian fishing vessels, with an aggregate of 
fifty-eight men, were frozen in, and that, as their pro- 
visions would not last beyond the end of the year, 
they were sorely in need of help from the Swedes. 
Nordenskiold and his colleagues sent back word to 



796 THE ICE-BOUND NOKWEGIAIS'S. 

them, that they themselves had been obliged to pro- 
vide for a much larger consumption of victuals than 
they had bargained for, but that they were willing, 
after the 1st of December, to share their food with 
them if the Norwegians would undertake to conform 
strictly to the arrangements made by the leaders of 
the expedition. They were further informed that at 
Ice Fiord, on the west coast, a house had been erected 
at a time when it was in contemplation to establish 
a colony for the purpose of working the phosphate 
beds there. This house was warm and comfortable, 
and well-supplied with stoves, and with a stock of pro- 
visions. Eighteen of the Norwegians accordingly de- 
termined to repair thither, while the remaining forty 
stayed by their ships. 

On the 2 2d of October, Palander and five men 
started with sledges to visit the imprisoned fishermen, 
and reached Grey Point on the 24tli. The eighteen 
men had started for Ice Fiord about two weeks 
before. After having done what he could in the way 
of advice to those left behind, Palander set out to 
return on the 26th ; but though the distance between 
the two places is only ten miles as the crow files, it 
took no less than five days to get back to the ships. 

On the 4th of November a storm arose, which dis- 
persed the ice and released two of the imprisoned fish- 
ing vessels, and thirty-eight of the Norwegians man- 
aged to reach home after a long and perilous voyage, and 
after vainly attempting to rescue their countrymen 
in Ice Fiord. Two men, an old ice-master named 
Mattilas d-nd his cook, remained at Grey Point by the 
ice-bound vessels, being unwilling to abandon them. 
They appear to have endeavored subsequently to 
reach Mussel Bay, as their corpses were found in an 
open boat. 



THE WINTER AT JMUiSSEL BAY. 797 

The fate of the eighteen men left in Ice Fiord was 
ascertained by Captain Mack, who discovered the 
dead bodies of these unfortunate fishermen, together 
with a diary kept regularly from the 7th of October, 
1872, to the 3d of March, 1873, and with less regu- 
larity until the 19th of April. From his description, 
and from a perusal of the diary, it appears beyond 
doubt that their sad fate was due entirely to want of 
experience. They practised no bodily exercises, and 
busied themselves with no employment — at least the 
diary makes mention of none, and no trace of any has 
been left. 

Turning from this sad picture to the Swedes in 
their winter-quarters, we iiud that they were occupy- 
ing themselves with severe bodily exercises, the effect 
of which was so beneficial, that only two men died 
of the whole number, and all the others enjoyed good 
health. 

Toward the close of April, Nordenskiold and Pal- 
ander with fourteen men started north, the intention 
being to get as near the Pole as possible. They made 
their way to Parry Islands, crossing from the JSorth 
Cape on the ice. Here they found the ice so strong 
to the northward that the idea of a long journey in 
that direction was out of the question. They re- 
turned to Mussel Bay on the 29th of June, after an 
absence of sixty days, during which they encountered 
very severe weather. Subsequently they again en- 
deavored to travel northward by sledges from Phippa 
Island, but were prevented by lack of provisions. 

Early in June the monotony of Mussel Bay was 
enlivened by the arrival of the Steamship Diana, just 
from England, having on board Leigh Smith's ex- 
ploring party. On the 30th of June, the ice broke 
46 



798 ATTEMPTS TO EESCUE THE NORWEGIAJN^S. 

up and the Gladan immediately started for home, 
whither the Polhelm soon followed her, amving at 
Tromso on the Oth of August, 1873. Although the 
expedition was forced to return without having 
accomplished one of its main objects — the reaching of 
a very high latitude by means of sledges, — still, the 
harvest of results obtained by dredging, by magnetic, 
meteorological, botanical, and geological observations 
is extremely rich. These throw great light on the 
amount and nature of organic life within the Polar 
Circle, as well as on the great physical changes which 
those regions have undergone in past times. 

Much sympathy was excited in Norway by the news 
of the ice-bound fishermen brought by their com- 
panions, and immediate but unavailing measures 
were adopted for their relief. In November 1872 
the steamer '^ Albert," commanded by Captain Otto, 
sailed from Norway for Ice Fiord, but was obliged to 
return owing to bad weather and the intense cold. 
Captain Kjelsen, in the "Isbjorn," then made another 
gallant attempt to effect a rescue. He sailed from 
Tromso December 24th. The cold soon rendered 
navigation very difficult ; but they stood gallantly on, 
and came in sight of Bear Island when, as the vessel 
was now one mass of ice, the attempt to reach Spitz- 
bergen was relinquished. 

Nothing daunted, a third vessel sailed for the 
rescue in the end of the same month. This was the 
seal huiit( r " Groenland," manned by seventy men and 
commanded by Captain Jacob Melsom. She arrived 
off Bell Sound, in Spitzbergeii, March 6th, and forced 
her way under full steam, through the pack ice, up to 
the entrance of Ice Fiord, where she was stopped. 
It was impossible to approach the land, and Melsom was 



DISASTER OTnT THE KOVA ZEMBLA COAST. 799 

obliged to give iip his plan of sending n rescuing 
party over the ice, to the interior of the hord. The 
ice was a mixture of bay and okl pack, covered with 
hummocks, the vessel was ten miles from J and, and 
would quite likely have been blown oif while the 
sledge party was away. Captain Melsom died April 
27th. The fate of the twenty fishermen has already 
been related. 

Another Norwegian, Captain Tobiesen, distinguish- 
ed as an Arctic explorer, was obliged to pass the winter 
of 1872-3 on the Nova Zembla coast. Most of the 
crew escaped overland to Archangel. Tobiesen, his 
son, and two men remained on the vessel, but finding 
it leaking were obliged to go ashore, where the Cap- 
tain and his son died of scurvy. The two survivors 
put off in a boat in August, 1873, and were picked 
up by a Eussian vessel. 

England has sent out no Arctic Expedition since 
the search for Franklin was ended ; but several En- 
glish yachtsmen, James Lamont, B. Leigh Smith and 
others, have cruised in the Spitzbergen seas. Mr. 
Smith's third voyage of discovery was made in the 
steamship Diana, owned by Mr. Lamont, w^hich sailed 
from Dundee, May 10tl{ 1873, with Mr. Smith's 
yacht Samson as a tender. When in the vicinity of 
Mussel Bay, a smack was spoken which communica- 
ted the intelligence that the Swedish expedition was 
there frozen in. Soon the Swedes were descried, and, 
when they observed the Diana bearing down upon 
them with all her flags flying, they ran along the ice 
to meet her. The Swedish vessels were lying close 
in shore, and between them and the Diana there were 
about three and-a-half miles of fast floe, in many 
places seven feet thick. The unfortunate explorers were 



800 CRUISE OF THE DIANA. 

soon on board tlie Diana, and received many kind- 
nesses. After supplying the Swedes with fresh 
provisions, Mr. Smith proceeded on his voyage. On 
reaching the Seven Islands, further progress was 
barred by ice ; and after visiting Treiiren berg Bay, 
Hecla Cove, and other places, the Diana bore up for 
Dundee on the 16th of September, 1873. 

The spirit of Arctic adventure has been reviving 
in England for several years, and it seems probable 
that a Government expedition on a grand scale will 
soon attempt to reach the North Pole; and the 
route u]3 Smith's Strait and Kennedy Channel — 
whose waters thus far have been navigated only by 
United States ships — is admitted to be the only 
practicable one. Lady Franklin warmly favors the 
enterprise, and hopes " for the credit and honor of 
England, that the exploration of the North Pole will 
not be left to any other country." " The navy," says 
an English admiral, '' needs some action to wake it 
up from the sloth of routine, and save it from the 
canker of prolonged peace. The navy of England 
cries not for mere war to gratify its desire for honor- 
able employment or fame. There are other achieve- 
ments as glorious as a victorious battle ; and a wise 
ruler and a wise peo[)le will be careful to satisfy a 
craving which is the life-blood of a profession." An- 
other English writer, speaking of Captain Hall, says : — 
" The rude wooden monument to the intrepid Amer- 
ican, standing alone in the Polar solitude, is at the 
same time a grand memorial, a trophy, and a chal- 
lenge." 



Errata. 
Pasre 698. For 1870, read W 
Page 750. For 1871, read \> 



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" LIVIlSreSTONB LOST AND FOUND, 

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GREAT PICTORIAL WORK, 

ARCTIC EXPLOEATIOFS, 

CONTAINING GKAPHIG DELINEATIONS OF 

LIFE AMID THE lOE, 

THE WONDERS OP THE GREAT POLAR SEA, AND THE 
MARVELOUS ESCAPE OF THE EXPLORERS 

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CONTBEAEE AIsTD HOVv^SOIS'S 

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